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Books > Music > Theory of music & musicology > General
Shostakovich's music is often described as being dynamic, energetic. But what is meant by 'energy' in music? After setting out a broad conceptual framework for approaching this question, Michael Rofe proposes various potential sources of the perceived energy in Shostakovich's symphonies, describing also the historical significance of energeticist thought in Soviet Russia during the composer's formative years. The book is in two parts. In Part I, examples are drawn from across the symphonies in order to demonstrate energy streams within various musical dimensions. Three broad approaches are adopted: first, the theories of Boleslav Yavorsky are used to consider melodic-harmonic motion; second, Boris Asafiev's work, with its echoes of Ernst Kurth, is used to describe form as a dynamic process; and third, proportional analysis reveals numerous symmetries and golden sections within local and large-scale temporal structures. In Part II, the multi-dimensionality of musical energy is considered through case studies of individual movements from the symphonies. This in turn gives rise to broader contextualised perspectives on Shostakovich's work. The book ends with a detailed examination of why a piece of music might contain golden sections.
In his second collection of writings, acclaimed music critic Gene Santoro takes the reader on a tour through the ever-changing soundscape of modern popular music. Ranging across jazz (John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Tom Harrell), rock (Sting, Elvis Costello, P.J. Harvey), and the international scene (Jamaican, Brazilian, and African pop music), Santoro shows the subtle and often surprising connections between the diverse people who create so many dazzling sounds.
David Tudor is remembered today in two guises: as an extraordinary pianist of post-war avant-garde music who worked closely with composers like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen and as a founding figure of live-electronic music. His early realization of indeterminate graphic scores and his later performances using homemade modular instruments both inspired a whole generation of musicians. But his reticence, his unorthodox approaches, and the diversity of his creative output - which began with the organ and ended with visual art - have kept Tudor a puzzle. Illustrated with more than 300 images of diagrams, schematics, and photographs of Tudor's instruments, Reminded by the Instruments sets out to solve the puzzle of David Tudor by applying Tudor's own methods for approaching the materials of others to the vast archive of materials that he himself left behind. You Nakai deftly patches together instruments, electronic circuits, sketches, diagrams, recordings, letters, receipts, customs declaration forms, and testimonies like modular pieces of a giant puzzle to reveal the long-hidden nature of Tudor's creative process. Rejecting the established narrative of Tudor as a performer-turned-composer, this book presents a lively portrait of an artist whose activity always merged both of these roles. In reading Tudor's electronic devices as musicological 'texts' and examining his idiosyncratic use of electronic circuits, Nakai undermines discourses on sound and illuminates our understanding of the instruments behind the sounds in post-war experimental music.
How was Africa seen by the West during the colonial period? How do
Europeans and Americans conceive of Africa in today's postcolonial
era? Such questions have preoccupied anthropologists, historians,
and literary scholars for years. But few have asked the reverse:
how did--and do--Africans see Europe and the United States? Fewer
still have wondered how Western images of Africa and African
representations of the West might mirror one another.
Contemplating Shostakovich marks an important new stage in the understanding of Shostakovich and his working environment. Each chapter covers aspects of the composer's output in the context of his life and cultural milieu. The contributions uncover 'outside' stimuli behind Shostakovich's works, allowing the reader to perceive the motivations behind his artistic choices; at the same time, the nature of those choices offers insights into the workings of the larger world - cultural, social, political - that he inhabited. Thus his often ostensibly quirky choices are revealed as responses - by turns sentimental, moving, sardonic and angry - to the particular conditions, with all their absurdities and contradictions, that he had to negotiate. Here we see the composer emerging from the role of tortured loner of older narratives into that of the gregarious and engaged member of his society that, for better and worse, characterized the everyday reality of his life. This invaluable collection offers remarkable new insight, in both depth and range, into the nature of Shostakovich's working circumstances and of his response to them. The collection contains the seeds for a wide range of new directions in the study of Shostakovich's works and the larger contexts of their creation and reception.
With this study the author "opened up a previously locked door of Beethoven research" (Martin Geck). The book presents conclusive answers to questions that had occupied critics for more than a century. It makes clear what exactly Beethoven and his contemporaries meant by the term "heroic". It proves that the "heroic-allegorical ballet" The Creatures of Prometheus is a key work for an understanding of the Eroica, and shows that Beethoven associated the First Consul of the French Republic, Napoleon Bonaparte, with the mythical figure of the Titan Prometheus. The book draws on interdisciplinary researches in the areas of Greek Mythology, Napoleonic History and Comparative Literature.
Music, Sexuality and the Enlightenment explains how Mozart's music for Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and CosA fan tutte 'sounds' the intentions of Da Ponte's characters and their relationships with one another. Mozart, by way of the infinitely generative and beautiful logic of the sonata principle, did not merely interpret Da Ponte's characterizations but lent them temporal, musical forms. Charles Ford's analytic interpretation of these musical forms concerns processes and structures in detail and at medium- to long-term levels. He addresses the music of a wide range of arias and ensembles, and develops original ways to interpret the two largely overlooked operatic genres of secco recitative and finales. Moreover, Ford presents a new method by which to relate musical details directly to philosophical concepts, and thereby, the music of the operas to the inwardly contradictory thinking of the European Enlightenment. This involves close readings of late eighteenth-century understandings of 'man' and nature, self and other, morality and transgression, and gendered identities and sexuality, with particular reference to contemporary writers, especially Goethe, Kant, Laclos, Rousseau, Sade, Schiller, Sterne and Wollstonecraft. The concluding discussion of the implied futures of the operas argues that their divided sexualities, which are those of the Enlightenment as a whole, have come to form our own unquestioned assumptions about gender differences and sexuality. This, along with the elegant and eloquent precision of Mozart's music, is why Figaro, Giovanni and CosA still maintain their vital immediacy for audiences today.
Making Music with Sounds offers a creative introduction to the art of making sound-based music. It introduces the elements of making compositions with sounds and facilitates creativity in school age children, with the activities primarily for 11-14 year old students. It can also be used by people of all ages becoming acquainted with this music for the first time. Sound-based music is defined as the art form in which the sound, rather than the musical note, is the basic unit and is closely related to electronic music and the sonic arts. The art of sound organisation can be found in a number of forms of music--in film, television, theatre, dance, and new media. Despite this, there are few materials available currently for young people to discover how to make sound-based music. This book offers a programme of development starting from aural awareness, through the discovery and organisation of potential sounds, to the means of generating and manipulating sounds to create sequences and entire works. The book's holistic pedagogical approach to composition also involves aspects related to musical understanding and appreciation, reinforced by the author's online pedagogical ElectroAcoustic Resource Site (EARS II).
Making Music with Sounds offers a creative introduction to the art of making sound-based music. It introduces the elements of making compositions with sounds and facilitates creativity in school age children, with the activities primarily for 11-14 year old students. It can also be used by people of all ages becoming acquainted with this music for the first time. Sound-based music is defined as the art form in which the sound, rather than the musical note, is the basic unit and is closely related to electronic music and the sonic arts. The art of sound organisation can be found in a number of forms of music--in film, television, theatre, dance, and new media. Despite this, there are few materials available currently for young people to discover how to make sound-based music. This book offers a programme of development starting from aural awareness, through the discovery and organisation of potential sounds, to the means of generating and manipulating sounds to create sequences and entire works. The book's holistic pedagogical approach to composition also involves aspects related to musical understanding and appreciation, reinforced by the author's online pedagogical ElectroAcoustic Resource Site (EARS II).
- Highly accessible and code-free introduction to game audio, suitable for a wide range of undergraduate courses, such as music production, sound design and composition - Accompanied by eresources, including downloadable projects for each chapter - A great addition to our growing catalogue of game audio titles
- Highly accessible and code-free introduction to game audio, suitable for a wide range of undergraduate courses, such as music production, sound design and composition - Accompanied by eresources, including downloadable projects for each chapter - A great addition to our growing catalogue of game audio titles
Brian Eno's seminal album Ambient 1: Music for Airports continues to fascinate and charm audiences, not only as a masterpiece of ambient music, but as a powerful and transformative work of art. Author John T. Lysaker situates this album in the context of twentieth-century art music, where its ambitions and contributions to avant garde music practice become even more apparent. To appreciate the album's multifaceted character, Lysaker advocates for "prismatic listening," an attentiveness that continually shifts registers in the knowledge that no single approach can grasp the work as a whole. Exploring each of the album's four tracks and their unique sonic arrangements, Brian Eno's Ambient 1: Music for Airports argues that the album must be approached from at least three angles: as an ambient contribution to lived environments that draws upon cybernetics and the experiments of Erik Satie, as an exploration of what John Cage has termed the "activity of sounds," and as a work of conceptual art that asks us to think freshly about artistic creativity, listening, and the broad ecology of interactions that not only make art possible, but the full range of human meaning. If one listens in this way, Music for Airports becomes a sonic image that blurs the nature-culture distinction and rescues the most interesting concerns of avant-garde music from the social isolation of concert halls and performance spaces.
Since his arrival in New York in 1961, Bob Dylan has always been something of a mystery. He has worn a variety of masks that have delighted, puzzled, amused, and angered his many audiences. He has been poet, rocker, preacher, trickster, and prophet, and he has filled all these personas with songs and different voices. Nonetheless, Dylan has always been perceived as an authentic artist. Andrea Cossu brings the making of Bob Dylan to center stage in this new book, which offers a strikingly fresh explanation of Dylan and the changes he made throughout his career. Cossu s enjoyable descriptions of key Dylan performances show us how Dylan created his authenticity through performance, and how the many attempts to make Bob Dylan have often involved the interaction between the artist, his public image, and his many audiences.Touching on four different periods and tours from his first days in Greenwich Village to his electric turn at Newport, from the Rolling Thunder Revue and Dylan s born-again years to his late career the book offers a striking vision of how Dylan built his image and learned to live with its burden, painting a unique and coherent new portrait of the artist. A select number of books were printed with the incorrect index. We apologize for this mistake and have posted the final index for your convenience."
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the cross-pollenization of world musical materials and practices has accelerated precipitously, due in large part to advances in higher-speed communications and travel. We live now in a world of global musical practice that will only continue to blossom and develop through the twenty-first century and beyond. Yet music theory as an academic discipline is only just beginning to respond to such a milieu. Conferences, workshops and curricula are for the first time beginning to develop around the theme of 'world music theory', as students, teachers and researchers recognize the need for analytical concepts and methods applicable to a wider range of human musics, not least the hybrid musics that influence (and increasingly define) more and more of the world's musical practices. Towards a Global Music Theory proposes a number of such concepts and methods stemming from durational and acoustic relationships between 'twos' and 'threes' as manifested in various interrelated aspects of music, including rhythm, melody, harmony, process, texture, timbre and tuning, and offers suggestions for how such concepts and methods might be applied effectively to the understanding of music in a variety of contexts. While some of the bases for this foray into possible methods for a twenty-first century music theory lie along well established acoustical and psycho-acoustical lines, Dr Mark Hijleh presents a broad attempt to apply them conceptually and comprehensively to a variety of musics in a relevant way that can be readily apprehended and applied by students, scholars and teachers.
The Psychology of Music serves as an introduction to an interdisciplinary field in psychology, which focuses on the interpretation of music through mental function. This interpretation leads to the characterization of music through perceiving, remembering, creating, performing, and responding to music. In particular, the book provides an overview of the perception of musical tones by discussing different sound characteristics, like loudness, pitch and timbre, together with interaction between these attributes. It also discusses the effect of computer resources on the psychological study of music through computational modeling. In this way, models of pitch perception, grouping and voice separation, and harmonic analysis were developed. The book further discusses musical development in social and emotional contexts, and it presents ways that music training can enhance the singing ability of an individual. The book can be used as a reference source for perceptual and cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists, and musicians. It can also serve as a textbook for advanced courses in the psychological study of music.
The musicological study of popular music has developed, particularly over the past twenty years, into an established aspect of the discipline. The academic community is now well placed to discuss exactly what is going on in any example of popular music and the theoretical foundation for such analytical work has also been laid, although there is as yet no general agreement over all the details of popular music theory. However, this focus on the what of musical detail has left largely untouched the larger question - so what? What are the consequences of such theorization and analysis? Scholars from outside musicology have often argued that too close a focus on musicological detail has left untouched what they consider to be more urgent questions related to reception and meaning. Scholars from inside musicology have responded by importing into musicological discussion various aspects of cultural theory. It is in that tradition that this book lies, although its focus is slightly different. What is missing from the field, at present, is a coherent development of the what into the so what of music theory and analysis into questions of interpretation and hermeneutics. It is that fundamental gap that this book seeks to fill. Allan F. Moore presents a study of recorded popular song, from the recordings of the 1920s through to the present day. Analysis and interpretation are treated as separable but interdependent approaches to song. Analytical theory is revisited, covering conventional domains such as harmony, melody and rhythm, but does not privilege these at the expense of domains such as texture, the soundbox, vocal tone, and lyrics. These latter areas are highly significant in the experience of many listeners, but are frequently ignored or poorly treated in analytical work. Moore continues by developing a range of hermeneutic strategies largely drawn from outside the field (strategies originating, in the most part, within psychology and philosophy) but still deeply r
This is an essential book for all performers and students of Classical and Romantic music. Problems of performing practice did not disappear with the death of Handel. This book is the first to examine the changing relationship, during the period 1750-1900, between what composers committed to paper and what performers were expected to play. From the Foreword by Sir Roger Norrington: `This is the book we have been waiting for ... Music-making must always involve guesses and inspirations, creative hunches and improvised strategies, above all, instinct and imagination. But if we don't have all the answers, the least we can do is to set out on our journey with the right questions. These questions and indeed many of the possible answers, Clive Brown gives in wonderful profusion. I cannot recommend this book too highly.'
Helie Salomon's Scientia artis musice (1274), is a practical manual devoted to basic concepts, psalmody, vocal pedagogy, the musical hand in singing, clefs as indicators of the tone (mode) to which a piece belongs, and practical instruction in the singing of four-voice parallel organum. Joseph Dyer presents the first, much-needed, modern edition of Salomon's treatise, accompanied by a full English translation, comprehensive introduction and commentary. This edition corrects errors in the 1784 edition of Martin Gerbert, includes the music of chants omitted by Gerbert from the tonary, and makes available reproductions in colour of the eight illustrations in the treatise.
The fundamental changes that resulted in the development of the Baroque style around the turn of the seventeenth century also had a profound effect on music theory. Music Theory in Seventeenth-Century England explores these changes, concentrating specifically on English writings because of their emphasis on practical application and consequent ready rejection of the obsolete. This allows for a detailed and comprehensive commentary on how treatises reflect musical developments during the period.
Memphis Boys chronicles the story of the rhythm section at Chips Moman's American Studios from 1964, when the group began working together, until 1972, when Moman shut down the studio and moved the entire operation to Atlanta. Utilizing extensive interviews with Moman and the group, as well as additional comments from the songwriters, sound engineers, and office staff, author Roben Jones creates a collective biography combined with a business history and a critical analysis of important recordings. She reveals how the personalities of the core group meshed, how they regarded newcomers, and how their personal and musical philosophies blended with Moman's vision to create timeless music based on themes of suffering and sorrow. Recording sessions with Elvis Presley, the Gentrys, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, the Box Tops, Joe Tex, Neil Diamond, B. J. Thomas, Dionne Warwick, and many others come alive in this book. Jones provides the stories behind memorable songs composed by group writers, such as "The Letter," "Dark End of the Street," "Do Right Woman," "Breakfast in Bed," and "You Were Always on My Mind." Featuring photographs, personal profiles, and a suggested listening section, Memphis Boys details a significant phase of American music and the impact of one amazing studio. Roben Jones of Gallipolis, Ohio, has published poetry in various magazines and in Wild Sweet Notes: Fifty Years of West Virginia Poetry, 1950-1999.
How are our ability and motivation to be creative shaped by the world around us? Why does creativity seem to flourish in some environments, while others seem to stifle it? Many societies value creativity as an abstract concept and many, perhaps even most, individuals feel an internal drive to be creative; however, tremendous social pressures restrict individuals' development of creative skill sets, engagement in creative activities, and willingness to take creative risks. Becoming Creative explores how social and cultural factors enable or inhibit creativity in music. Author Juniper Hill integrates perspectives from ethnomusicology, education, sociology, psychology, and performance studies, while prioritizing the voices of practicing musicians and music educators. Insights are drawn from ethnographic research and in-depth interviews with classical, jazz, and traditional musicians in South Africa, Finland, and the US. By comparing and analysing these musicians' personal experiences, Becoming Creative deepens our understanding of the development and practice of musical creativity, the external factors that influence it, and strategies for enhancing it. Hill reveals the common components of how musical creativity is experienced across these cultures and explains why creativity might not always be socially desirable. She identifies ideal creativity-enabling criteria - specific skills sets, psychological traits and states, and access to opportunities and authority - and illustrates how these enablers of creativity are fostered or thwarted by a variety of beliefs, attitudes, learning methods, social relationships, institutions, and social inequalities. In addition to theoretical contributions, many sections have direct applications for practice, especially the examination of formal and informal strategies for overcoming inhibitors of creativity. Becoming Creative is for scholars, artists, educators, and anyone wishing to better understand and support creative development in today's world.
United in their indebtedness to the scholarship of Raymond Monelle, an international group of contributors, including leading authorities on music and culture, come together in this state of the art volume to investigate different ways in which music signifies. Music semiotics asks what music signifies as well as how the signification process takes place. Looking at the nature of musical texts and music's narrativity, a number of the essays in this collection delve into the relationship between music and philosophy, literature, poetry, folk traditions and the theatre, with opera a genre that particularly lends itself to this mode of investigation. Other contributions look at theories of musical markedness, metaphor and irony, using examples and specific musical texts to serve as case studies to validate their theoretical approaches. Musical works discussed include those by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Wagner, Stravinsky, BartA(3)k, Xenakis, Kutavicius and John Adams, offering stimulating discussions of music that attest to its beauty as much as to its intellectual challenge. Taking Monelle's writing as a model, the contributions adhere to a method of logical argumentation presented in a civilized and respectful way, even - and particularly - when controversial issues are at stake, keeping in mind that contemplating the significance of music is a way to contemplate life itself.
Designed as a tribute to Robert Garfias, who has conducted field work in more cultures than any other living ethnomusicologist, this volume explores the originating encounter in field work of ethnomusicologists with the musicians and musical traditions they study. The nineteen contributors provide case studies from nearly every corner of the world, including biographies of important musicians from the Philippines, Turkey, Lapland, and Korea; interviews with, and reports of learning from, musicians from Ireland, Bulgaria, Burma, and India; and analyses of how traditional musicians adapt to the encounter with modernity in Japan, India, China, Turkey, Afghanistan, Morocco, and the United States. The book also provides a window into the history of ethnomusicology since all the contributors have had a relationship with the University of Washington, home to one of the oldest programs in ethnomusicology in the United States. Inspired by the example of Robert Garfias, they are all indefatigable field researchers and among the leading authorities in the world on their particular musical cultures. The contributions illustrate the core similarities in their approach to the discipline of ethnomusicology and at the same time deal with a remarkably wide range of perspectives, themes, issues, and theoretical questions. Readers should find this collection of essays a fascinating, indeed surprising, glimpse into an important aspect of the history of ethnomusicology.
At the end of his life, Pierre Schaeffer commented that his musical and sound experiments had attempted to go beyond 'do-re-mi'. This had a direct bearing on EinstA1/4rzende Neubauten's musical philosophy and work, with the musicians always striving to extend the boundaries of music in sound, instrumentation and purpose. The group are one of the few examples of 'rock-based' artists who have been able to sustain a breadth and depth of work in a variety of media over a number of years while remaining experimental and open to development. Jennifer Shryane provides a much-needed analysis of the group's important place in popular/experimental music history. She illustrates their innovations with found- and self-constructed instrumentation, their Artaudian performance strategies and textual concerns, as well as their methods of independence. EinstA1/4rzende Neubauten have also made a consistent and unique contribution to the development of the independent German Language Contemporary Music scene, which although often acknowledged as influential, is still rarely examined.
A creative memoir by the 2019 Wellcome Prize winner Will Eaves chronicles a year spent writing a sonata from scratch, in full recognition of the likelihood of failure, to see what can be learned about ambition and limitation. And time. The Point of Distraction explores the way that second-string activities bring one's main interests in life into focus, considering artists as critics, writers as musicians. Staring at your creative pursuit straight on can render it impossible, but if you let it occupy the space of distraction, to your side, it lives and breathes. This novel memoir touches on neuroscience, musical theory and will power. |
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