|
Books > Music > Theory of music & musicology
Sonic Rupture applies a practitioner-led approach to urban
soundscape design, which foregrounds the importance of creative
encounters in global cities. This presents an alternative to those
urban soundscape design approaches concerned with managing the
negative health impacts of noise. Instead, urban noise is
considered to be a creative material and cultural expression that
can be reshaped with citywide networks of sonic installations. By
applying affect theory the urban is imagined as an unfolding of the
Affective Earth, and noise as its homogenous (and homogenizing)
voice. It is argued that noise is an expressive material with which
sonic practitioners can interface, to increase the creative
possibilities of urban life. At the heart of this argument is the
question of relationships: how do we augment and diversify those
interconnections that weave together the imaginative life and the
expressions of the land? The book details seven sound installations
completed by the author as part of a creative practice research
process, in which the sonic rupture model was discovered. The sonic
rupture model, which aims to diversify human experiences and urban
environments, encapsulates five soundscape design approaches and
ten practitioner intentions. Multiple works of international
practitioners are explored in relation to the discussed approaches.
Sonic Rupture provides the domains of sound art, music, creative
practice, urban design, architecture and environmental philosophy
with a unique perspective for understanding those affective forces,
which shape urban life. The book also provides a range of practical
and conceptual tools for urban soundscape design that can be
applied by the sonic practitioner.
Through a transnational, comparative and multi-level approach to
the relationship between youth, migration, and music, the aesthetic
intersections between the local and the global, and between agency
and identity, are presented through case studies in this book.
Transglobal Sounds contemplates migrant youth and the impact of
music in diaspora settings and on the lives of individuals and
collectives, engaging with broader questions of how new modes of
identification are born out of the social, cultural, historical and
political interfaces between youth, migration and music. Thus,
through acts of mobility and environments lived in and in-between,
this volume seeks to articulate between musical transnationalism
and sense of place in exploring the complex relationship between
music and young migrants and migrant descendant's everyday lives.
Breaking is the first and most widely practiced hip-hop dance in
the world today, with an estimated one million participants taking
part in this dynamic, multifaceted artform. Yet, despite its global
reach and over 40 years of existence, historical treatments of the
dance have largely neglected the African Americans who founded it.
Dancer and scholar Serouj "Midus" Aprahamian offers, for the first
time, a detailed look into the African American beginnings of
breaking in the Bronx, New York, during the 1970s. Given the
pivotal impact the dance had on hip-hop's formation, this book also
challenges numerous myths and misconceptions that have permeated
studies of hip-hop culture's emergence. Aprahamian draws on
untapped archival material, primary interviews, and detailed
descriptions of early breaking to bring this buried history to
life, with a particular focus on the early aesthetic development of
the dance, the institutional settings in which hip-hop was
conceived, and the movement's impact on sociocultural conditions in
New York throughout the 1970s. By featuring the overlooked
first-hand accounts of over 50 founding b-boys and b-girls, this
book also shows how indebted breaking is to African American
culture and interrogates the disturbing factors behind its
historical erasure.
Translating for Singing discusses the art and craft of translating
singable lyrics, a topic of interest in a wide range of fields,
including translation, music, creative writing, cultural studies,
performance studies, and semiotics. Previously, such translation
has most often been discussed by music critics, many of whom had
neither training nor experience in this area. Written by two
internationally-known translators, the book focusses mainly on
practical techniques for creating translations meant to be sung to
pre-existing music, with suggested solutions to such linguistic
problems as those associated with rhythm, syllable count, vocal
burden, rhyme, repetition and sound. Translation theory and
translations of lyrics for other purposes, such as surtitles, are
also covered. The book can serve as a primary text in courses on
translating lyrics and as a reference and supplementary text for
other courses and for professionals in the fields mentioned. Beyond
academia, the book is of interest to professional translators and
to librettists, singers, conductors, stage directors, and audience
members.
Although David Bowie has famously characterized himself as a "leper
messiah," a more appropriate moniker might be "rock god" someone
whose influence has crossed numerous sub-genres of popular and
classical music and can at times seem ubiquitous. By looking at key
moments in his career (1972, 1977-79, 1980-83, and 1995-97) through
several lenses--theories of sub-culture, gender/sexuality studies,
theories of sound, post-colonial theory, and performance studies
Waldrep will examine Bowie's work in terms not only of his auditory
output but his many reinterpretations of it via music videos,
concert tours, television appearances, and occasional movie roles.
Future Nostalgia will look at all aspects of Bowie's
career--musical recordings, live concerts, music videos, film
performances, and television appearance--in an attempt to trace
Bowie's contribution to the performative paradigms that constitute
contemporary rock music.
The early years of the Franco regime saw the formation of a strong
governmental propaganda apparatus. Through expansive press laws
that solidified state control over public and private media outlets
alike, the Franco government directly influenced what information
was made available to the public. While music critics and
journalists were by no means free from government control and
direction, music criticism under the Franco regime did not adhere
to any official party "line" on music. Indeed, music criticism
often demonstrated a diversity of opinion and ideological belief
that runs counter to many common assumptions about journalism under
fascist regimes. In Music Criticism and Music Critics in Early
Francoist Spain, Eva Moreda Rodriguez presents a kaleidoscopic
portrait of the diverse and often divergent writings of music
critics in the early years of the Franco regime. Although she does
not shy away from the thorny issues of propaganda and censorship,
Moreda Rodriguez considers other factors that shaped the
journalistic discourse surrounding music. Political rivalries,
ideological diversity within musical "conservatism," as well as the
explicit and implicit expectations of the Franco government all
influenced the diverse landscape of music criticism. Moreover, the
central issues that music critics were concerned with during
Francoism's early years-modernist music, Spanish early music,
traditional music, and music's role in organizing the state-had
already been at the center of debates within the press for several
decades. Carefully selecting contemporary writings by well-known
music critics, Moreda Rodriguez contextualizes music criticism
written during the Franco regime within the broader intellectual
history of Spain from the nineteenth century onwards. The first
critical study of the musical press of Francoist Spain in the
broader cultural and social fabric of the regime, Music Criticism
and Music Critics in Early Francoist Spain is an essential resource
for musicologists interested in 20th-century Spain, as well as
Hispanists interested in the early Franco regime.
As a composer, Hector Berlioz embodied his century as the
quintessential Romantic artist. Niccolo Paganini called him
"Beethoven's only heir," and for a young Richard Wagner, he was
dazzling as a composer, orchestra conductor, and critic. But
Berlioz was known as much for his writings as for his music, and
for decades Berlioz scholars have stressed the need for a good
English-language anthology of his criticism. Featuring new
translations and commentary by Katherine Kolb and Samuel N.
Rosenberg, Berlioz on Music: Selected Criticism 1824-1837 is that
volume. Berlioz's centrality as a critic results from his literary
brilliance, his location in Paris - the music capital of the
nineteenth century - and his 28-year tenure at the powerful Journal
des debats. As one of its founding editors and principal writers,
Berlioz contributed about 250 articles to the publication. Berlioz
on Music comprises articles from the first 14 years of Berlioz's
public writings, given in chronological order and, with few
exceptions, in their entirety. Following chronology affords an
overview of Berlioz's evolution as critic and of a key phase in the
development of modern musical culture. The volume also presents
explanatory data in engagingly composed introductions and
footnotes, which elucidate Berlioz's references to persons, musical
and literary works, historical events, and more. The reader is
allowed to follow musical events during one of the richest periods
in French cultural history, including the revolutionary decade
surrounding 1830, a year marked by Victor Hugo's victory for the
Romantics in the Classical bastion of the Theatre-Francais, by the
premiere of Berlioz's Fantastic Symphony, and by the toppling of
the Restoration monarchy. The result is an engaging collection of
Berlioz's lively prose, presented with scholarly rigor and rendered
in accessible English. Music historians, both professional and
amateur, as well 19th century European history enthusiasts will
find Berlioz on Music a compelling introduction to one of the
richest periods of French culture.
The state of contemporary music is dizzyingly diverse in terms of
style, media, traditions, and techniques. How have trends in music
developed over the past decades? Music Composition in the 21st
Century is a guide for composers and students that helps them
navigate the often daunting complexity and abundance of resources
and influences that confront them as they work to achieve a
personal expression. From pop to classical, the book speaks to the
creative ways that new composers mix and synthesize music, creating
a music that exists along a more continuous spectrum rather than in
a series of siloed practices. It pays special attention to a series
of critical issues that have surfaced in recent years, including
harmony, the influence of minimalism, the impact of technology,
strategies of "openness," sound art, collaboration, and
improvisation. Robert Carl identifies an emerging common practice
that allows creators to make more informed aesthetic and technical
decisions and also fosters an inherently positive approach to new
methods.
The increasing interest in artistic research, especially in music,
is throwing open doors to exciting ideas about how we generate new
musical knowledge and understanding. This book examines the wide
array of factors at play in innovative practice and how by treating
it as research we can make new ideas more widely accessible. Three
key ideas propel the book. First, it argues that artistic research
comes from inside the practice and exists in a space that
accommodates both objective and subjective observation and analyses
because the researcher is the practitioner. It is a space for
dialogue between apparently opposing binaries: the composer and the
performer, the past and the present, the fixed and the fluid, the
intellectual and the intuitive, the abstract and the embodied, the
prepared and the spontaneous, the enduring and the transitory, and
so on. It is not so much constructed in a logical, sequential
manner in the way of the scientific method of doing research but
more as a "braided" space, woven from many disparate elements.
Second, the book articulates the notion that artistic research in
music has its own verification procedures that need to be brought
into the academy, especially in terms of the moderation of
non-traditional research outputs, including the description of the
criteria for allocation of research points for the purposes of data
collection, as well as real world relevance and industry
engagement. Third, by way of numerous examples of original and
creative music making, it demonstrates in practical terms how
exploration and experimentation functions as legitimate academic
research. Many of the case studies deliberately cross boundaries
that were previously assumed to be rigid and definite in order to
blaze new musical trails, creating new collaborations and
synergies.
|
You may like...
Albertina Sisulu
Sindiwe Magona, Elinor Sisulu
Paperback
R159
Discovery Miles 1 590
|