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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Theory of music & musicology
When the story of modernity is told from a theological perspective,
music is routinely ignored - despite its pervasiveness in modern
culture and the manifold ways it has been intertwined with
modernity's ambivalent relation to the Christian God. In
conversation with musicologists and music theorists, in this
collection of essays Jeremy Begbie aims to show that the practices
of music and the discourses it has generated bear their own kind of
witness to some of the pivotal theological currents and
counter-currents shaping modernity. Music has been deeply affected
by these currents and in some cases may have played a part in
generating them. In addition, Begbie argues that music is capable
of yielding highly effective ways of addressing and moving beyond
some of the more intractable theological problems and dilemmas
which modernity has bequeathed to us. Music, Modernity, and God
includes studies of Calvin, Luther and Bach, an exposition of the
intriguing tussle between Rousseau and the composer Rameau, and an
account of the heady exaltation of music to be found in the early
German Romantics. Particular attention is paid to the complex
relations between music and language, and the ways in which
theology, a discipline involving language at its heart, can come to
terms with practices like music, practices which are coherent and
meaningful but which in many respects do not operate in
language-like ways.
Written by Simone Dennis, Lecturer in Anthropology at the
University of Southern Queensland, Australia, this book illuminates
the social processes of being and becoming emotional and of making
music, and the ways in which these processes are intertwined in the
context of an Australian police department that wields subtle forms
of power by emotional and musical means. The book is based on 18
months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a metropolitan police
(concert) band. Of primary analytic concern is the embodied and
social basis of emotion, and its capacity to facilitate connections
between persons in and through musical means. Police Beat moves
away from a focus on the cognitive apparatus that produces
experiences, and which thusly obscure the far more active and
multisensual roles that musicians have in constituting and
organizing their own sensual perceptions, to focus on embodied and
social experiences of making music, and of making emotion. The book
offers new insights into the means and modes of wielding subtle
forms of policing power in the contemporary world, and points to
the importance of music in organizing the social world.
The BBC Proms is the world's biggest and longest-running classical
music festival and one of the jewels in the crown for the BBC. Held
every summer at the Royal Albert Hall in London, it is one of the
strongest brand names in the music world and attracts a glittering
array of artists and orchestras. Whether you're a first-time
visitor or an experienced Prommer, watching at home or listening on
radio or online, the BBC Proms Guide will be an excellent companion
to a remarkable summer of music, which you can treasure and return
to in years to come. Filled with the latest programme details and
illuminating articles by leading experts, journalists and writers,
the BBC Proms Guide gives a wide-ranging insight into the
performers and repertoire, as well as thought-provoking opinion
pieces about audiences, music and music-making. The contents for
2021 include a specially commissioned short story by award-winning
author Chibundu Onuzo; an exploration of music and silence by
author, commentator and broadcaster Will Self; a celebration of the
history and influence of the iconic Royal Albert Hall 150 years
after its opening by historian, author, curator and television
presenter Lucy Worsley; a tribute to anniversary composer Igor
Stravinsky; and an article spotlighting the remarkable Kanneh-Mason
siblings (spearheaded by royal-wedding cellist Sheku).
Drawing upon the past two decades of burgeoning literature in
philosophy of music, this study offers a comprehensive, critical
analysis of what is entailed in performance interpretation. It
argues that integrity and other virtues offset the harm that
virtuosity and rigid historical authenticity can impose on the
perceptive judgment required of excellent musical interpretation.
Proposed are challenging and provocative reassessments of the
appropriate roles for virtuosity and historical authenticity in
musical performance. Acknowledging the competitive ethos of the
contemporary music scene, it details the kind of character a
performer needs to develop in order to withstand those pressures
and to achieve interpretive excellence. Performers are encouraged
to examine and explore the ethical dimension of their art against
their responsibilities to the diverse patrons they serve.
Professional and student performers and instructors will
appreciate this practical discussion of the ethical challenges
performers confront when interpreting musical works. The ethical
discourse applies to instrumental performance studies, the history
and theory of music, general music pedagogy, and philosophy of
music courses.
This rigorous book is a complete and up-to-date reference for the
Csound system from the perspective of its main developers and power
users. It explains the system, including the basic modes of
operation and its programming language; it explores the many ways
users can interact with the system, including the latest features;
and it describes key applications such as instrument design, signal
processing, and creative electronic music composition. The Csound
system has been adopted by many educational institutions as part of
their undergraduate and graduate teaching programs, and it is used
by practitioners worldwide. This book is suitable for students,
lecturers, composers, sound designers, programmers, and researchers
in the areas of music, sound, and audio signal processing.
Where did the major scale come from? Why does most traditional
non-Western music not share Western principles of harmony? What
does the inner structure of a canon have to do with religious
belief? Why, in historical terms, is J.S. Bach s music regarded as
a perfect combination of melody and harmony? Why do clocks in
church towers strike dominant-tonic-dominant-tonic? What do
cathedrals have to do with monochords? How can the harmonic series
be demonstrated with a rope tied to a doorknob, and how can it be
heard by standing next to an electric fan? Why are the free ocean
waves in Debussy s La Mer, the turbulent river waves in Smetana s
Moldau, and the fountain ripples in Ravel s Jeux d Eau pushed at
times into four-bar phrases? Why is the metric system inherently
unsuitable for organizing music and poetry? In what way does Plato
s Timaeus resemble the prelude to Wagner s Das Rheingold? Just how
does Beethoven s work perfectly illustrate fully functional
tonality, and why were long-range works based on this type of
tonality impossible before the introduction of equal temperament?
In this new century, what promising materials are available to
composers in the wake of harmonic experimentation and, some would
argue, exhaustion? The answers to these seemingly complicated
questions are not the sole province of music professors or
orchestra conductors. In fact, as E. Eugene Helm demonstrates, they
can just as easily be explained to amateurs, and their answers are
important if we are to understand how Western music works. The full
range of Western music is explored through 21 concise chapters on
such topics as melody, harmony, counterpoint, texture, melody
types, improvisation, music notation, free imitation, canon and
fugue, vibration and its relation to harmony, tonality, and the
place of music in architecture and astronomy. Intended for amateurs
and professionals, concert-goers and conductors, Helm offers in
down-to-earth language an explanation of the foundations of our
Western music heritage, deepening our understanding and the
listening experience of it for all."
In this book, perspectives in psychology, aesthetics, history and
philosophy are drawn upon to survey the value given to sad music by
human societies throughout history and today. Why do we love
listening to music that makes us cry? This mystery has puzzled
philosophers for centuries and tends to defy traditional models of
emotions. Sandra Garrido presents empirical research that
illuminates the psychological and contextual variables that
influence our experience of sad music, its impact on our mood and
mental health, and its usefulness in coping with heartbreak and
grief. By means of real-life examples, this book uses applied music
psychology to demonstrate the implications of recent research for
the use of music in health-care and for wellbeing in everyday life.
The elements of music, musical values, the relationship of music
to the other ancient arts--all of these subjects are explored as
Polin discusses the musical heritage of the ancient Near East.
Contributions by Alberto Brodesco, James Cody, Andrea Cossu, Anne
Margaret Daniel, Jesper Doolard, Nina Goss, Jonathan Hodgers, Jamie
Lorentzen, Fahri OE z, Nick Smart, and Thad Williamson Bob Dylan is
many things to many people. Folk prodigy. Rock poet. Quiet
gentleman. Dionysian impresario. Cotton Mather. Stage hog. Each of
these Dylan creations comes with its own accessories, including a
costume, a hairstyle, a voice, a lyrical register, a metaphysics,
an audience, and a library of commentary. Each Bob Dylan joins a
collective cast that has made up his persona for over fifty years.
No version of Dylan turns out uncomplicated, but the postmillennial
manifestation seems peculiarly contrary-a tireless and enterprising
antiquarian; a creator of singular texts and sounds through
promiscuous poaching; an artist of innovation and uncanny renewal.
This is a Dylan of persistent surrender from and engagement with a
world he perceives as broken and enduring, addressing us from a
past that is lost and yet forever present. Tearing the World Apart
participates in the creation of the postmillennial Bob Dylan by
exploring three central records of the twenty-first century-"Love
and Theft" (2001), Modern Times (2006), and Tempest (2012)-along
with the 2003 film Masked and Anonymous, which Dylan helped write
and in which he appears as an actor and musical performer. The
collection of essays does justice to this difficult Bob Dylan by
examining his method and effects through a disparate set of
viewpoints. Readers will find a variety of critical contexts and
cultural perspectives as well as a range of experiences as members
of Dylan's audience. The essays in Tearing the World Apart
illuminate, as a prism might, its intransigent subject from
enticing and intersecting angles.
Sound coming from outside the field of vision, from somewhere
beyond, holds a privileged place in the Western imagination. When
separated from their source, sounds seem to manifest transcendent
realms, divine powers, or supernatural forces. According to legend,
the philosopher Pythagoras lectured to his disciples from behind a
veil, and two thousand years later, in the age of absolute music,
listeners were similarly fascinated with disembodied sounds,
employing various techniques to isolate sounds from their sources.
With recording and radio came spatial and temporal separation of
sounds from sources, and new ways of composing music.
Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice explores the
phenomenon of acousmatic sound. An unusual and neglected word,
"acousmatic" was first introduced into modern parlance in the
mid-1960s by avant garde composer of musique concrete Pierre
Schaeffer to describe the experience of hearing a sound without
seeing its cause. Working through, and often against, Schaeffer's
ideas, Brian Kane presents a powerful argument for the central yet
overlooked role of acousmatic sound in music aesthetics, sound
studies, literature, philosophy and the history of the senses. Kane
investigates acousmatic sound from a number of methodological
perspectives -- historical, cultural, philosophical and musical --
and provides a framework that makes sense of the many surprising
and paradoxical ways that unseen sound has been understood. Finely
detailed and thoroughly researched, Sound Unseenpursues unseen
sounds through a stunning array of cases -- from Bayreuth to
Kafka's "Burrow," Apollinaire to %Zi%zek, music and metaphysics to
architecture and automata, and from Pythagoras to the present-to
offer the definitive account of acousmatic sound in theory and
practice.
The first major study in English of Pierre Schaeffer's theory of
"acousmatics," Sound Unseen is an essential text for scholars of
philosophy of music, electronic music, sound studies, and the
history of the senses."
Now you can have over 100 of the most useful chords right at your
fingertips. This chart gives you all the basic chords in every key.
Each chord is shown in standard music notation and as an
easy-to-read piano keyboard diagram. Fingerings are given for each
chord. Also included is a clear description of inverting chords.
The ancient science of harmonics investigates the arrangements of
pitched sounds which form the basis of musical melody, and the
principles which govern them. It was the most important branch of
Greek musical theory, studied by philosophers, mathematicians and
astronomers as well as by musical specialists. This 2007 book
examines its development during the period when its central ideas
and rival schools of thought were established, laying the
foundations for the speculations of later antiquity, the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance. It concentrates particularly on the
theorists' methods and purposes and the controversies that their
various approaches to the subject provoked. It also seeks to locate
the discipline within the broader cultural environment of the
period; and it investigates, sometimes with surprising results, the
ways in which the theorists' work draws on and in some cases
influences that of philosophers and other intellectuals.
In the past, theorists have separated metre from rhythm, seeing metre as a static grid and rhythm as a fluid grouping of notes and figures. Meter as Rhythm offers a new theory of metre in which metre and rhythm are no longer oppposed. Arguing against the mathematical and structuralist approaches to musical analysis, Hasty provides an alternative view which affirms the spontaneity and openness of musical experience as something fully temporal and processive, rather than as a mere container of rhythm. Combining speculative, psychological, and music-analytic perspectives and drawing on philosophers of process, Hasty integrates technical analytical details -- using examples from the early seventeenth century to mid-twentieth century - with larger aesthetic issues.
This edited book covers many topics in musicological literature,
gathering various approaches to music studies that encapsulate the
vivid relation music has to society. It focusses on repertoires and
geographical areas that have not previously been well frequented in
musicology. As readers will see, music has many roles to play in
society. Music can be a generator of social phenomena, or a result
of them; it can enhance or activate social actions, or simply
co-habit with them. Above all, music has a stable position within
society, in that it actively participates in it. Music can either
describe or prescribe social aspects; musicians may have a certain
position/role in society (e.g., the "popstar" as fashion leader,
spokesman for political issues, etc.). Depending on the type of
society, music may have a certain "meaning" or "function" (music
does not mean the same thing everywhere in the world). Lastly,
music can define a society, and it is not uncommon for it to best
define a particular historical moment. Case-studies in this work
provide visibility for musical cultures that are rarely exposed in
the dominant musicological discourse. Several contributions combine
musicological analysis with "insider-musician" points of view. Some
essays in the collection address the cultural clash between certain
types of music/musicians and the respective institutional
counterparts, while certain contributing authors draw on
experimental research findings. Throughout this book we see how
musics are socially significant, and - at the same time - that
societies are musically significant too. Thus the book will appeal
to musicologists, cultural scholars and semioticians, amongst
others.
The Tempered scale proposed in 1482 as a practical solution to
discords was only introduced and applied 240 years later by J. S.
Bach. Since then, this scale has ruled the tone frequencies in all
variety of chords. Due to its simple conception, small
imperfections in harmony are unavoidable. Now a new musical scale
is proposed, and this book details the new concepts and features
and their application in the manufacture of musical instruments, to
introduce the new sounds in harmony to the world market. The
Natural Set of forty-seven elements was the beginning of the
research. The M comma, the smallest consonance that can be
distinguished by the ear, together with J and U, allowed the
attainment of the Natural Progression of Musical Cells, while its
624 elements led to the discovery of K and P semitone factors to
establish the Piagui octave. The proper sequence of eight K and
four P replace the twelve T factors of the Tempered intonation. The
origins of K and P are the ten tone frequencies found in the
Pythagoras and Aristoxenus heptatonic scales. Piagui and Tempered
chord wave peaks of basic twenty-four triads are drawn by computer
to demonstrate the true concords and discords respectively.
Now in paperback -- from surf music to hot-rod records to the sunny
pop of the Beach Boys, Jan & Dean, the Byrds, and the Mama's
& the Papa's, Hollywood Eden captures the fresh blossom of a
young generation who came together in the epic spring of the 1960s
to invent the myth of the California Paradise. Central to the story
is a group of sun-kissed teens from the University High School
class of 1958 -- a class that included Jan & Dean, Nancy
Sinatra, and future members of the Beach Boys -- who came of age in
Los Angeles at the dawn of a new golden era when anything seemed
possible. These were the people who invented the idea of modern
California for the rest of the world. But their own private
struggles belied the paradise portrayed in their music. What began
as a light-hearted frolic under sunny skies ended up crashing down
to earth just a few short but action-packed years later as, one by
one, each met their destinies head-on. A rock 'n' roll opera loaded
with violence, deceit, intrigue, low comedy, and high drama,
Hollywood Eden tells the story of a group of young artists and
musicians who bumped heads, crashed cars, and ultimately flew too
close to the sun.
With The Archive of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin. Catalogue a
complete catalogue of the music archive of the Sing-Akademie zu
Berlin is now available for the first time since the archive, which
disappeared during World War II, was rediscovered in 1999. (The
whole work is complete in English and German). Since 2001 the more
than 260,000 pages of music manuscripts, copies and first prints
(from 17th to early 19th cent.) were revised by two musicologists
which compiled an index of shelf marks and an index of composers.
Thus detailed searches in the holdings of the archive (which were
filmed since 2002 in severeal parts on microfiche at K. G. Saur)
are possible for the first time. The Catalogue lists 9,735 works of
1.008 different composers. It provides also a concordance signature
- microfiche and therefore serves as a cumulated guide to the
microfiche editions, all the more the registers have been revised
and improved. The unique collection is introduced by a number of
articles by the following musicologists: Axel Fischer (Archive of
the Sing-Akademie, Berlin), Christoph Henzel (Hochschule fur Musik,
Wurzburg), Klaus Hortschansky (University of Munster), Matthias
Kornemann (Archive of the Sing-Akademie, Berlin), Ulrich Leisinger
(Mozarteum, Salzburg), Mary Oleskiewicz (University of
Massachusetts Boston), Ralph-J. Reipsch (Zentrum fur
Telemann-Pflege und -Forschung, Magdeburg), Tobias Schwinger
(Berlin).
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