|
|
Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Theory of music & musicology > General
The Hispanic rite, a medieval non-Roman Western liturgy, was
practiced across the Iberian Peninsula for over half a millennium
and functioned as the most distinct marker of Christian identity in
this region. As Christians typically began every liturgical day
throughout the year by singing a vespertinus, this chant genre in
particular provides a unique window into the cultural and religious
life of medieval Iberia. The Hispanic rite has the largest corpus
of extant manuscripts of all non-Roman liturgies in the West, which
testifies to the importance placed on their transmission through
political and cultural upheavals. Its chants, however, use a
notational system that lacks clear specification of pitch and has
kept them barred from in-depth study. Text, Liturgy and Music in
the Hispanic Rite is the first detailed analysis of the
interactions between textual, liturgical, and musical variables
across the entire extant repertoire of a chant genre central to the
Hispanic rite, the vespertinus. By approaching the vespertini
through a holistic methodology that integrates liturgy, melody, and
text, author Raquel Rojo Carrillo identifies the genre's norms and
traces the different shapes it adopts across the liturgical year
and on different occasions. In this way, the book offers an
unprecedented insight into the liturgical edifice of the Hispanic
rite and the daily experience of Christians in medieval Iberia.
This book explores an album of popular music with a remarkable
significance to a violent wave of postcolonial tensions in the
Netherlands in the 1970s. Several "actions" were claimed by a small
number of first-generation descendants of ca. 12,500 reluctant
migrants from the young independent state of Indonesia (former
Dutch East Indies). Transferred in 1951, this culturally coherent
group consisted of ex-Royal Dutch Colonial Army personnel and their
families. Their ancient roots in the Moluccan archipelago and their
protestant-christian faith defined their minority image. Their
sojourn should have been temporary, but frustratingly turned out to
be permanent. At the height of strained relations, Massada rose to
the occasion. Astaganaga (1978) is a telling example of the will to
negotiate a different diasporic Moluccan identity through uplifting
contemporary sounds.
Most die-hard Brazilian music fans would argue that Getz/Gilberto,
the iconic 1964 album featuring "The Girl from Ipanema," is not the
best bossa nova record. Yet we've all heard "The Girl from Ipanema"
as background music in a thousand anodyne settings, from cocktail
parties to telephone hold music. So how did Getz/Gilberto become
the Brazilian album known around the world, crossing generational
and demographic divides? Bryan McCann traces the history and making
of Getz/Gilberto as a musical collaboration between leading figure
of bossa nova Joao Gilberto and Philadelphia-born and New
York-raised cool jazz artist Stan Getz. McCann also reveals the
contributions of the less-understood participants (Astrud
Gilberto's unrehearsed, English-language vocals; Creed Taylor's
immaculate production; Olga Albizu's arresting,
abstract-expressionist cover art) to show how a perfect balance of
talents led to not just a great album, but a global pop sensation.
And he explains how Getz/Gilberto emerged from the context of Bossa
Nova Rio de Janeiro, the brief period when the subtle harmonies and
aching melodies of bossa nova seemed to distill the spirit of a
modernizing, sensuous city. 33 1/3 Global, a series related to but
independent from 33 1/3, takes the format of the original series of
short, music-based books and brings the focus to music throughout
the world. With initial volumes focusing on Japanese and Brazilian
music, the series will also include volumes on the popular music of
Australia/Oceania, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and more.
The field of Sound Studies has changed and developed dramatically
over the last two decades involving a vast and dizzying array of
work produced by those working in the arts, social sciences and
sciences. The study of sound is inherently interdisciplinary and is
undertaken both by those who specialize in sound and by others who
wish to include sound as an intrinsic and indispensable element in
their research. This is the first resource to provide a wide
ranging, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary investigation and
analysis of the ways in which researchers use a broad range of
methodologies in order to pursue their sonic investigations. It
brings together 49 specially commissioned chapters that ask a wide
range of questions including; how can sound be used in current
academic disciplines? Is sound as a methodological tool
indispensable for Sound Studies and what can sound artists
contribute to the discourse on methodology in Sound Studies? The
editors also present 3 original chapters that work as provocative
‘sonic methodological interventions’ prefacing the 3 sections
of the book.
From the mid-1950s through the 1960s, Hungarian composer Gyoergy
Ligeti went through a remarkable period of stylistic transition,
from the emulation of his fellow countryman Bela Bartok to his own
individual style at the forefront of the Western-European
avant-garde. Through careful study of the sketches and drafts, as
well as analysis of the finished scores, Metamorphosis in Music
takes a detailed look at this compositional evolution. Author
Benjamin R. Levy includes sketch studies created through
transcriptions and reproductions of archival material-much of which
has never before been published-providing new, detailed information
about Ligeti's creative process and compositional methods. The book
examines all of Ligeti's compositions from 1956 to 1970, analyzing
little-known and unpublished works in addition to recognized
masterpieces such as Atmospheres, Aventures, the Requieim, and the
Chamber Concerto. Discoveries from Ligeti's sketches, prose, and
finished scores lead to an enriched appreciation of these already
multifaceted works. Throughout the book, Levy interweaves sketch
study with comments from interviews, counterbalancing the
composer's own carefully crafted public narrative about his work,
and revealing lingering attachments to older forms and insights
into the creative process. Metamorphosis in Music is an essential
treatment of a central figure of the musical midcentury, who found
his place in a generation straddling the divide between the modern
and post-modern eras.
""Is there jazz in China?"" This is the question that sent author
Eugene Marlow on his quest to uncover the history of jazz in China.
Marlow traces China's introduction to jazz in the early 1920s, its
interruption by Chinese leadership under Mao in 1949, and its
rejuvenation in the early 1980s with the start of China's opening
to the world under Premier Deng Xiaoping. Covering a span of almost
one hundred years, Marlow focuses on a variety of subjects--the
musicians who initiated jazz performances in China, the means by
which jazz was incorporated into Chinese culture, and the musicians
and venues that now present jazz performances. Featuring unique,
face-to-face interviews with leading indigenous jazz musicians in
Beijing and Shanghai, plus interviews with club owners, promoters,
expatriates, and even diplomats, Marlow marks the evolution of jazz
in China as it parallels China's social, economic, and political
evolution through the twentieth and into the twenty-first century.
Also featured is an interview with one of the extant members of the
Jimmy King Big Band of the 1940s, one of the first major
all-Chinese jazz big bands in Shanghai. Ultimately, Jazz in China:
From Dance Hall Music to Individual Freedom of Expression is a
cultural history that reveals the inexorable evolution of a
democratic form of music in a Communist state.
Based upon Cantometrics: An Approach to the Anthropology of Music
(1976), by Alan Lomax, Songs of Earth: Aesthetic and Social Codes
in Music is a contemporary guide to understanding and exploring
Cantometrics, the system developed by Lomax and Victor Grauer for
analyzing the formal elements of music related to human geography
and sociocultural patterning. This carefully constructed
cross-cultural study of world music revealed deep-rooted
performance patterns and aesthetic preferences and their links with
environmental factors and ancient socioeconomic practices. This new
and updated edition is for anyone wishing to understand and more
deeply appreciate the forms and sociocultural contexts of the
musics of the world's peoples, and it is designed to be used by
both scholars and laypeople. Part One of the book consists of a
practical guide to using the Cantometrics system, a course with
musical examples to test one's understanding of the material, a
theoretical framework to put the methodology in context, and an
illustration of the method used to explore the roots of popular
music. Part Two includes guides to four other analytical systems
that Lomax developed, which focus on orchestration, phrasing and
breath management, vowel articulation, instrumentation, and
American popular music. Part Three provides resources for educators
who wish to use the Cantometrics system in their classrooms, a
summary of the findings and hypotheses of Lomax's original
research, and a discussion of Cantometrics' criticisms,
applications, and new approaches, and it includes excerpts of
Lomax's original writings about world song style and cultural
equity.
‘Sonic intimacy’ is a key concept through which sound, human
and technological relations can be assessed in relation to racial
capitalism. What is sonic intimacy, how is it changing and what is
at stake in its transformation, are questions that should concern
us all. Through an analysis of alternative music cultures of the
Black Atlantic (reggae sound systems, jungle pirate radio and grime
YouTube music videos), Malcolm James critically shows how sonic
intimacy pertains to modernity’s social, psychic, spatial and
temporal movements. This book explores what is urgently at stake in
the development of sonic intimacy for human relations and
alternative black and anti-capitalist public politics.
 |
The Polyphony of Life
(Hardcover)
Andreas Pangritz; Edited by John W. De Gruchy, John Morris
|
R794
R687
Discovery Miles 6 870
Save R107 (13%)
|
Ships in 18 - 22 working days
|
|
|
Sonic Writing explores how contemporary music technologies trace
their ancestry to previous forms of instruments and media. Studying
the domains of instrument design, musical notation, and sound
recording under the rubrics of material, symbolic, and signal
inscriptions of sound, the book describes how these historical
techniques of sonic writing are implemented in new digital music
technologies. With a scope ranging from ancient Greek music theory,
medieval notation, early modern scientific instrumentation to
contemporary multimedia and artificial intelligence, it provides a
theoretical grounding for further study and development of
technologies of musical expression. The book draws a bespoke
affinity and similarity between current musical practices and those
from before the advent of notation and recording, stressing the
importance of instrument design in the study of new music and
projecting how new computational technologies, including machine
learning, will transform our musical practices. Sonic Writing
offers a richly illustrated study of contemporary musical media,
where interactivity, artificial intelligence, and networked devices
disclose new possibilities for musical expression. Thor Magnusson
provides a conceptual framework for the creation and analysis of
this new musical work, arguing that contemporary sonic writing
becomes a new form of material and symbolic design--one that is
bound to be ephemeral, a system of fluid objects where technologies
are continually redesigned in a fast cycle of innovation.
What happens in our unconscious minds when we listen to, produce or
perform popular music? The Unconscious - a much misunderstood
concept from philosophy and psychology - works through human
subjects as we produce music and can be traced through the music we
engage with. Through a new collaboration between music theorist and
philosopher, Smith and Overy present the long history of the
unconscious and its related concepts, working systematically
through philosophers such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche,
psychoanalysts such as Freud and Lacan, to theorists such as
Deleuze and Kristeva. The theories offered are vital to follow the
psychological complexity of popular music, demonstrated through
close readings of individual songs, albums, artists, genres, and
popular music practices. Among countless artists, Listening to the
Unconscious draws from Prince to Sufjan Stevens, from Robyn to Xiu
Xiu, from Joanna Newsom to Arcade Fire, from PJ Harvey to LCD Sound
System, each of whom offer exciting inroads into the fascinating
worlds of our unconscious musical minds. And in return, theories of
the unconscious can perhaps takes us deeper into the heart of
popular music.
|
|