Serial music was one of the most important aesthetic movements to emerge in post-war Europe, but its uncompromising music and modernist aesthetic has often been misunderstood. This book focuses on the controversial journal die Reihe, whose major contributors included Stockhausen, Eimert, Pousseur, Dieter Schnebel and G. M. Koenig, and discusses it in connection with many lesser-known sources in German musicology. It traces serialism's debt to the theories of Klee and Mondrian, and its relationship to developments in concrete art, (...) modern poetry and the information aesthetics and semiotics of Max Bense and Umberto Eco. M. J. Grant sketches an aesthetic theory of serialism as experimental music, arguing that serial theory's embrace of both rigorous intellectualism and aleatoric processes is not, as many have suggested, a paradox, but the key to serial thought and to its relevance for contemporary theory. (shrink)

While acknowledging that Pierre Boulez is not a philosopher, and that he is wary of the potential misuse of philosophy with regard to music, this study investigates a series of philosophically charged terms and concepts which he uses in discussion of his music. Campbell examines significant encounters which link Boulez to the work of a number of important philosophers and thinkers, including Adorno, Lévi-Strauss, Eco and Deleuze. Relating Boulez's music and ideas to broader currents of thought, the (...) book illuminates a number of affinities linking music and philosophy, and also literature and visual art. These connections facilitate enhanced understanding of post-war modernist music and Boulez's distinctive approach to composition. Drawing on a wide range of previously unpublished documentary sources and providing musical analysis of a number of key scores, the book traces the changing musical, philosophical and intellectual currents which inform Boulez's work. (shrink)

The essence of Marxist philosophy is a philosophical criticism of society, and its development is driven by its philosophical criticism of social phenomena. Examining and criticizing music from a philosophical perspective can provide us with a brand new theoretical framework for music philosophy, exploring and applying new philosophical theories to analyze the fusion of ethnic elements in modern music composition, thereby expanding the philosophical field of music. This paper first introduces the concept and development of (...) Marx's philosophy and philosophical view of music, then analyzes the characteristics and current situation of the fusion of ethnic elements in modern music composition and discusses the criticality and practicality of the fusion of ethnic elements in modern music composition under the perspective of Marx's philosophical view. Finally, it is pointed out that the fusion of ethnic elements in modern music composition has the philosophical basis of combining formal analysis with meaning interpretation, technical rationality with musical aesthetics, and intersubjectivity. From the perspective of Marxist philosophy, exploring the philosophical foundation of the combination of modern music composition and ethnic factors helps to deeply analyze the philosophical connotations of modern music composition and ethnic elements, seek dialogue and understanding between modern music and ethnic elements, and reshape human sensory understanding. (shrink)

Pendragon Press is proud to offer this new, revised, and expanded edition of Formalized Music, Iannis Xenakis's landmark book of 1971. In addition to three totally new chapters examining recent breakthroughs in music theory, two original computer programs illustrating the actual realization of newly proposed methods of composition, and an appendix of the very latest developments of stochastic synthesis as an invitation to future exploration, Xenakis offers a very critical self-examination of his theoretical propositions and artistic output (...) of the past thirty-five years. This edition of Formalized Music is an essential tool for understanding the man and the thought processes of one of this century's most important and revolutionary musical figures. (shrink)

Volume 1 -- Unit 1: Tragedy as an independent art of musical drama. Chapter 1: Plato's well-educated men, the dancers: Harmonia kai rhuthmos as "music and dance" -- Chapter 2: Tragedy as a necessarily performed "musical" art in the Poetics -- Chapter 3: The irreducibility of tragedy to literature -- Chapter 4: Harmonia kai rhuthmos as "music and dance" in Politics VIII.

This volume, reproducing a special issue of The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism on &"The Philosophy of Music&" (Winter 1994) with a revised introduction and two new articles, is distinguished by its breadth of content, diversity of approaches, and clarity of argument, which should make it useful for classroom teaching. The topics covered include musical representation, the expression of feeling in music, the metaphysics of operatic speech and song, musical understanding, musical composition, feminist music theory, (...) music and politics, music and racial identity, music in non-Western cultures, and the ontological implications of recording technology for rock music. The approaches used are philosophical, historical, social and political, feminist, and ethnomusicological. The book includes discussions of a great many styles and historical periods of music, from ancient Greek music and music theory to instrumental and operatic music in the Western classical tradition, Persian music, music of the Blackfoot Indians, rock and the blues, and the avant-garde compositions and performances of John Cage. The contributors, all eminent scholars in the field, are Philip Alperson, No&ël Carroll, Stephen Davies, Claire Detels, John Andrew Fisher, Lydia Goehr, Peter Kivy, Jerrold Levinson, James Manns, Bruno Nettl, Jenefer Robinson, Joel Rudinow, G&öran S&örbom, Francis Sparshott, and Kendall Walton. (shrink)

Experimental encounters in music and beyond opens a necessary dialogue on experimental practices in the arts and negotiates their place in contemporary society. Going beyond the music-historical usage of the term "experimental", this book reimagines experimentation as an open working definition encompassing multiple forms of artistic attitudes and processes. The texts, images, and sounds offer multiple traces, faces, and spaces, revealing what experimentalism in music and the wider arts entails today. With perspectives from a range of disciplines (...) - from choreography through composition to philosophy and beyond - the different experiences and artistic projects documented and discussed explore the complexity of experimentation in a way that is all the richer for being never-ending."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Part I. Ireland and beyond. SacrumProfanum : mapping cultural damage through music ; Second glance at Ted Hughes's Crow : transcendence interrupted ; Joycean aesthetics and mythic imagination in the music of Frank Corcoran ; 'In exile anyway' : Jonathan Creasy interviews Benjamin Dwyer ; ...eleven reflections on Beckett, music and silence ; 'Insight - deeper' : Benjamin Dwyer interviews Kevin Volans ; Umbilical : the story of Oedipus, the story of Jocasta -- Part II. Beyond Ireland. (...) 'O master of secret configurations' : reflections on the Adorno-Berg correspondence ; Laughing at the chaos : György Ligeti (1923-2006) ; Teleology or transcendence? : perspectives on Ligeti's collusion with automatism ; '...a gentle kind of political' : Benjamin Dwyer interviews George Crumb and David Starobin ; Leonard Bernstein : reflections on a centenary ; 'Dios los cría' : Barry Guy and Maya Homburger ; Barry Guy's Time passing ; 'We are using who we are' : Benjamin Dwyer interviews Mats Gustafsson ; Toward a transcendental philosophy of improvisation. (shrink)

De la composition musicale au design sonore" réunit différents textes pour la plupart déjà publiés, soit dans des revues, soit comme chapitres d'ouvrage ou actes de colloque sur le thème de la musique, progressivement repensée comme le design de sons. Rassemblés à l'occasion d'une Habilitation à Diriger les Recherches (2018), ces textes concernent la création musicale, sa relation à l'image et l'écriture des sons à un moment charnière - la révolution digitale de la fin du siècle dernier - qui (...) posent de nouveaux défis, tant du côté de la création, que de celui de la recherche et de leurs enseignements réciproques. D'une réflexion musicologique déjà orientée vers la question de la perception, ses travaux ont peu à peu porté sur les relations entre la musique et la technologie puis, via celle de la musique au cinéma et à l'accompagnement de l'image, l'auteur en est arrivé à la question du design sonore. Aux confins de la philosophie et des sciences de l'art, il s'interroge finalement sur les perspectives de formation des futurs acteurs de cette interdisciplinarité épistémologique. Peut-on être assurément chercheur simultanément non seulement dans sa pratique mais aussi sur sa pratique? Cette double posture est-elle épistémologiquement tenable et si oui à quelle condition? A supposer qu'elle le soit au plan existentiel, n'implique-t-elle pas une position de juge et partie, et donc un risque de biais cognitif, à tout le moins méthodologique? (shrink)

This essay explores some aspects of the relation between philosophy and music. First, how music can inspire philosophy; second, how philosophy can inspire music. Mathematics as a middle term between music and philosophy, the idea of wholeness in a musical composition or a philosophical text, music as a mode of thought displaying traits such as logic, coherence, and sense—these are some ways in which music and philosophy may be seen to be connected. Also, (...) composers sometimes have explicit recourse to philosophical ideas in advancing their music, there being prominent examples of this in the twentieth century. Lastly, given there is such a thing as the philosophy of music, might there also be the music of philosophy? (shrink)

This article addresses the inherently relational nature of musical agency, drawing upon interdisciplinary research. It argues that music does not exist in isolation but within social and emotional contexts shaped by a network of relationships among musicians. These interactions create a collaborative space that transcends mere technical execution, fostering a collective experience enriched by shared sensitivity and emotional engagement. Consequently, musical practice, whether compositional or performative, entails a moral responsibility, particularly challenging the perspectives of Levinas; Bauman; and Wilde, who (...) traditionally separated art from ethics. As outlined in Nielsen and Cobussen’s work “music contributes to a better understanding of one’s place within the world, and thus, to an ethical sensibility”, emphasizing how musical practice cultivates ethical awareness through its relational nature. Music is thus conceived as a moral endeavor, where care extends not only to the music itself but also to the individuals involved in its creation and performance. Moreover, this moral responsibility extends to future generations, as musical tradition is conceived as a temporal bridge linking the past, the present, and the future. The tradition is composed of individuals actively engaged in the practices that shape the tradition or traditions. Musicians bear an intergenerational responsibility toward those who will inherit and reinterpret current practices—a responsibility not grounded in direct reciprocity, but in what Randall describes as “conceptual ties”. The continuity of musical tradition and its aesthetic value depend on the care and responsibility each generation shows toward both the participants and the evolving cultural products of this process. Thus, the discussion elucidates the ethical dimensions of musical agency and practice, particularly in Western classical music, and highlights how our obligations to future generations are intrinsic to the practice itself, thereby contributing to broader debates on intergenerational care ethics. (shrink)

There are several possible ways for investigating the creative process in musical composition in order to induce certain assumptions about the nature of the compositional experience that may provide a certain philosophical framework for shaping compositional experiences in music educational settings at all levels. By taking an approach mainly based on writings and interviews of twentieth and twenty-first century composers, such as Boulez, Ferneyhough, Foss, Ligeti, Xenakis, Reich, Reynolds, Schoenberg, Stockhausen, and Varèse, among others, Eleni Lapidaki illustrates certain (...) parameters about their actual compositional process. Implications for music education are suggested for immersing student composers in learning experiences that respect their intuitions, search for their individuality, and place emphasis on innovation and creative freedom as inseparable from expression in their compositions. (shrink)

Music and the Idea of a World explores the bond between music and world by reflecting on great musical compositions and works by great thinkers from antiquity to the present. World, here, has several meanings. It is the natural world or cosmos, the inner world of feeling and thought, world history, and the world of tones (the musical universe). The book is intended for philosophic-minded readers who are fascinated by music and music lovers who enjoy thinking (...) about the philosophic questions that music raises. The seven-chapter journey begins with a contrast between the cosmologies of Plato and Schopenhauer (followed by a discussion of Palestrina's music and the world of the Bible). It then proceeds to chapters on music and nature in Victor Zuckerkandl's Sound and Symbol, a love song from Bach's St. Matthew Passion, a love song from Mozart's Magic Flute, Wagner's Tristan and Isolde in relation to Schopenhauer's cosmology of the will, twelve-tone music as the image of totalitarianism in Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, and the world of the inner life in Francis Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites. (shrink)

Music can answer questions that often confound more discursive modes of thought. Music takes concepts that are all too familiar, reframes these concepts, and returns them to us with incisive clarity and renewed vision. Unity is one of these "all too familiar concepts," thrown around by politicians, journalists, and pastors as if we all know what it means. By turning to music, especially musical space, the relational structure of unity becomes less abstract and more tangible within our (...) philosophy. Arnold Schoenberg, as an inherently musical thinker, is our guide in this study of unity. His reworking of musical structure, dissonance, and metaphysics transformed the tonal language and aesthetic landscape of twentieth century music. His philosophy of compositional unity helps us to deconstruct and reconceive how unity can be understood and worked with both aesthetically and theologically. This project also critiques Schoenberg's often monadic musical metaphysic by turning to Colin Gunton's conviction that the particularity and unity at the heart of God's triune being should guide all of our theological endeavors. Throughout, music accompanies our thinking, demonstrating not only how theology can benefit the philosophy of music but also how the philosophy of music can enrich and augment theological discourse. (shrink)

Most music we hear comes to us via a recording medium on which sound has been stored. Such remoteness of music heard from music made has become so commonplace it is rarely considered. _Musical Performance: A Philosophical Study_ considers the implications of this separation for live musical performance and music-making. Rather than examining the composition or perception of music as most philosophical accounts of music do, Stan Godlovitch takes up the problem of how (...) the tradition of active music playing and performing has been challenged by technology and what problems this poses for philosophical aesthetics. Where does does the value of musical performance lie? Is human performance of music a mere transfer medium? Is the performance of music more expressive than recorded music? Musical Performance poses questions such as these to develop a fascinating account of music today. musicians - but via some recording medium on which sound has been stored. (shrink)

The Treatise on musical objects by Pierre Schaeffer is regarded as his most important work on music and its relationship with technology. Schaeffer refers to his earlier research in musique concrète and expands this to suggest a methodology of working with sounds resulting from the recording process. Drawing on acoustics, physics, and physiology, but also philosophy and the relationship between subject and object, Schaeffer's book summarizes his theoretical and practical work in music composition. North and Dack present (...) an important book in the history of ideas in Europe that will resonate far beyond electroacoustic music."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Introduction -- The type/token theory introduced -- Motivating the type/token theory : repeatability -- Nominalist approaches to the ontology of music -- Musical anti-realism -- The type/token theory elaborated -- Types I : abstract, unstructured, unchanging -- Types introduced and nominalism repelled -- Types as abstracta -- Types as unstructured entities -- Types as fixed and unchanging -- Types II : platonism -- Introduction : eternal existence and timelessness -- Types and properties -- The eternal existence of properties reconsidered (...) -- Types and patterns -- Defending the type/token theory I -- Unstructuredness and analogical predication -- Musical works as fixed and unchanging -- Abstractness and audibility (again) -- Works and interpretations -- Conclusion and resumé -- Defending the type/token theory II : musical platonism -- Platonism it is : replies to Anderson and Levinson -- The existence conditions of works of music -- Composition as creative discovery -- The nature of the compositional process : replies to objections -- Composition and aesthetic appraisal : a reply to Levinson -- Composition and aesthetic appraisal : understanding, interpretation, and correctness -- Musical works as continuants : a theory rejected -- A theory introduced -- Explicating and motivating the continuant view -- The continuant view and repeatability -- Further objections to the continuant view -- Musical works as compositional actions : a critique -- Currie's action-type hypothesis -- Davies's performance theory -- Sonicism I : against instrumentalism -- Sonicism introduced -- Sonicism motivated : moderate empiricism -- Instrumentation : timbral sonicism introduced -- Scores -- Instrumentation, artistic properties, and aesthetic content -- Levinson's rejoinder -- Sonicism II : against contextualism -- Introduction : formulating contextualism -- Contextualist ontological proposals -- Levinson's doppelgänger thought-experiments -- Artistic, representational, and object-directed expressive properties -- Aesthetic and non-object-directed expressive properties -- Conclusion : the place of context. (shrink)

In 1947 Theodor Adorno, one of the seminal European philosophers of the postwar years, announced his return after exile in the United States to a devastated Europe by writing Philosophy of New Music. Intensely polemical from its first publication, every aspect of this work was met with extreme reactions, from stark dismissal to outrage. Even Schoenberg reviled it. Despite the controversy, Philosophy of New Music became highly regarded and widely read among musicians, scholars, and social philosophers. Marking a (...) major turning point in his musicological philosophy, Adorno located a critique of musical reproduction as internal to composition itself, rather than as a matter of the reproduction of musical performance. Consisting of two distinct essays, “Schoenberg and Progress” and “Stravinsky and Reaction,” this work poses the musical extremes in which Adorno perceived the struggle for the cultural future of Europe: between human emancipation and barbarism, between the compositional techniques and achievements of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. In this completely new translation—presented along with an extensive introduction by distinguished translator Robert Hullot-Kentor—Philosophy of New Music emerges as an indispensable key to the whole of Adorno's illustrious and influential oeuvre. Theodor W. Adorno was the leading figure of the Frankfurt school of critical theory. He authored more than twenty volumes, including Negative Dialectics, Philosophy of Modern Music, Kierkegaard, Dialectic of Enlightenment with Max Horkheimer, and Aesthetic Theory.Robert Hullot-Kentor has taught at Harvard and Stanford universities and written widely on Adorno. He has translated various works of Adorno, including Aesthetic Theory. (shrink)

Music-Dance explores the identity of choreomusical work, its complex authorship and its modes of reception as well as the cognitive processes involved in the reception of dance performance. Scholars of dance and music analyse the ways in which a musical score changes its prescriptive status when it becomes part of a choreographic project, the encounter between sound and motion on stage, and the intersection of listening and seeing. As well as being of interest to musicologists and choreologists considering (...) issues such as notation, multimedia and the analysis of performance, this volume will appeal to scholars interested in applied research in the fields of cognition and neuroscience. The line-up of authors comprises representative figures of today's choreomusicology, dance historians, scholars of twentieth-century composition and specialists in cognitive science and performance studies. Among the topics covered are multimedia and the analysis of performance; the notational practice of choreographers and the parallel attempts of composers to find a graphic representation for musical gestures; and the experience of dance as a paradigm for a multimodal perception, which is investigated in terms of how the association of sound and movement triggers emotions and specific forms of cognition. (shrink)

Postmodernity's Musical Pasts considers music after 1945 as a representation of concepts such as "historicity" and "temporality". The volume understands postmodernity as a period in which both modernism and postmodernism co-exist. It is attracted to a wider interpretation of "historicity" that focuses on the complex nexus of past-present-future. "Historicity" is understood as leaning closely on "temporality", generally thought of as the linear progression of past, present and future. The volume broadens the absolutist understanding of temporality to include processes which (...) can occur in circular, spiral, transcending and other formations. The book covers an extensive spectrum of topics from classical to popular and neo-traditional musics to concerns of the disciplines of musicology. Such a wide range of topics from both the centre and the periphery of the musicological canon mirrors the eclectic and diverse nature of the postwar era itself. The first section investigates how to understand manifestations of the past in musical composition with regard to time, on the one hand, and with regard to genre, style and idiom, on the other. A second section shows how time and history manifest themselves in art music. A third section takes the contrasts and transitional moments of post-1945 practices further by looking at the temporality of reception from different angles. A final part investigates questions of nostalgia and temporalities of belonging. TINA FR HAUF is Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University, New York and serves on the faculty of The Graduate Center, CUNY. CONTRIBUTORS: Michael Arnold, Susana Asensio Llamas, Georg Burgstaller, Caitlin Carlos, Daniela Fugellie, Tina Fr hauf, John Koslovsky, Lawrence Kramer, Beate Kutschke, Laurenz L tteken, Max Noubel, Joshua S. Walden. (shrink)

Profound theoretical and philosophical approach to contemporary music Unsayable Music presents theoretical, critical and analytical reflections on key topics of contemporary music including acoustic, electroacoustic and digital music, and audiovisual and multimedia composition. Six essays by Paulo C. Chagas approaching music from different perspectives such as philosophy, sociology, cybernetics, musical semiotics, media, and critical studies. Chagas’s practical experience, both as a composer of contemporary music and sound director of the Electronic Music Studio (...) of Cologne, nourishes his observations on the specific creativity that emerges with the use of the technical apparatus, the development of the electronic music studio, the different aesthetics of electroacoustic music, and the forms of audiovisual and multimedia composition. The title Unsayable Music is a reference to Wittgenstein, who suggested that sound is only the surface of music and that the musical work conceals something more profound that can hardly be described by philosophical models or scientific theories. (shrink)

_How does a man who once adored music beyond measure come to revile it as a form of tyranny?_ Throughout Pascal Quignard’s distinguished literary career, music has been a recurring obsession. As a musician he organized the International Festival of Baroque Opera and Theatre at Versailles in the early 1990s, and thus was instrumental in the rediscovery of much forgotten classical music. Yet in 1994 he abruptly renounced all musical activities. _The Hatred of Music_ is Quignard’s masterful (...) exploration of the power of music and what history reveals about the dangers it poses. From prehistoric chants to challenging contemporary compositions, Quignard reflects on music of all kinds and eras. He draws on vast cultural knowledge—the Bible, Greek mythology, early modern history, modern philosophy, the Holocaust, and more—to develop ten accessible treatises on music. In each of these small masterpieces the author exposes music’s potential to manipulate, to mesmerize, to domesticate. Especially disturbing is his scrutiny of the role music played in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Quignard’s provocative book takes on particular relevance today, as we find ourselves surrounded by music as never before in history. (shrink)

_How does a man who once adored music beyond measure come to revile it as a form of tyranny?_ Throughout Pascal Quignard’s distinguished literary career, music has been a recurring obsession. As a musician he organized the International Festival of Baroque Opera and Theatre at Versailles in the early 1990s, and thus was instrumental in the rediscovery of much forgotten classical music. Yet in 1994 he abruptly renounced all musical activities. _The Hatred of Music_ is Quignard’s masterful (...) exploration of the power of music and what history reveals about the dangers it poses. From prehistoric chants to challenging contemporary compositions, Quignard reflects on music of all kinds and eras. He draws on vast cultural knowledge—the Bible, Greek mythology, early modern history, modern philosophy, the Holocaust, and more—to develop ten accessible treatises on music. In each of these small masterpieces the author exposes music’s potential to manipulate, to mesmerize, to domesticate. Especially disturbing is his scrutiny of the role music played in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Quignard’s provocative book takes on particular relevance today, as we find ourselves surrounded by music as never before in history. (shrink)

In _Earworm and Event_ Eldritch Priest questions the nature of the imagination in contemporary culture through the phenomenon of the earworm: those reveries that hijack our attention, the shivers that run down our spines, and the songs that stick in our heads. Through a series of meditations on music, animal mentality, abstraction, and metaphor, Priest uses the earworm and the states of daydreaming, mind-wandering, and delusion it can produce to outline how music is something that is felt as (...) thought rather than listened to. Priest presents _Earworm and Event_ as a tête-bêche—two books bound together with each end meeting in the middle. Where _Earworm _theorizes the entanglement of thought and feeling, _Event _performs it. Throughout, Priest conceptualizes the earworm as an event that offers insight into not only the way human brains process musical experiences, but how abstractions and the imagination play key roles in the composition and expression of our contemporary social environments and more-than-human milieus. Unconventional and ambitious, _Earworm and Event_ offers new ways to interrogate the convergence of thought, sound, and affect. (shrink)

The essential purpose of this research study is to measure the impact of the applications of traditional Chinese philosophical thinking in film and television music composition; for measuring, the research study used open-ended and closed-ended questions related to the variables. This research study depends upon primary data analysis for collecting data associated with traditional Chinese philosophical thinking and music composition. These data were collected from film industries, directors, and actors in musical department research conducted in China. (...) For measuring, the research used smart PLS and run different results related to the variables, including independent and dependent variables. Indicator correlation, discriminant validity, and composite reliability are all tests run for measuring the research. The smart PLS Algorithm model explains the impact with each other. The overall result found a positive and significant effect on the applications of traditional Chinese philosophical thinking in film and television music composition. (shrink)

This musical-philosophical study brings something unique to Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of time, interweaving music improvisation, composition, and analysis, plus reformulations of Deleuze's concepts. The author draws on his own work alongside examples from the history of music practice in improvised and experimental musics, ultimately developing a new concept: Rhythmicity.

The conversations generated by the chapters in Music's Immanent Future grapple with some of music's paradoxes: that music of the Western art canon is viewed as timeless and universal while other kinds of music are seen as transitory and ephemeral; that in order to make sense of music we need descriptive language; that to open up the new in music we need to revisit the old; that to arrive at a figuration of music (...) itself we need to posit its starting point in noise; that in order to justify our creative compositional works as research, we need to find critical languages and theoretical frameworks with which to discuss them; or that despite being an auditory system, we are compelled to resort to the visual metaphor as a way of thinking about musical sounds. Drawn to musical sound as a powerful form of non-verbal communication, the authors include musicologists, philosophers, music theorists, ethnomusicologists and composers. The chapters in this volume investigate and ask fundamental questions about how we think, converse, write about, compose, listen to and analyse music. The work is informed by the philosophy primarily of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and secondarily of Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva and Jean-Luc Nancy. The chapters cover a wide range of topics focused on twentieth and twenty-first century musics, covering popular musics, art music, acousmatic music and electro-acoustic musics, and including music analysis, music's ontology, the noise/music dichotomy, intertextuality and music, listening, ethnography and the current state of music studies. The authors discuss their philosophical perspectives and methodologies of practice-led research, including their own creative work as a form of research. Music's Immanent Future brings together empirical, cultural, philosophical and creative approaches that will be of interest to musicologists, composers, music analysts and music philosophers. (shrink)

Introduction -- Beginnings. Elements and matter ; Aristoxenus' elements of music ; Transmission and reception ; Elements, letters, notes -- Matter and material. Dissonant material ; Sound and composition ; Given or constructed? ; Timbre, noise, and language -- Time and rhythm. Material and modernity ; Taking place ; Aperiodic rhythms ; Quasiperiodic forms -- Sounds and instruments. Pitched bodies ; Sounds without bodies ; Referennce ; Agent and reproducibility ; Sonocentrism -- Musical bodies. Bodies without sounds ; (...) Composing a gesture -- Conclusions. (shrink)

This paper aims at an analytical explanation of the distinctive nature of music, as it has been formulated in perhaps one of the world's very first works on the subject, namely the ‘Sangeet Ratnakar’ of Pandit Sarangadeva, a 13th century musicologist of India. He, in the first chapter of the work defines music ('sangeet' in Sanskrit and Hindi) as a composite of singing or 'Gita', instrumental music or 'vadan' and dancing or ‘nrittam’. In addition, he also holds (...) singing to be the most important component of music. These two ideas are not only unquestionably acceptable , as the analysis in the paper will show, but give to Indian music , in its difference from western music, its distinctively spiritual character, making it a path to liberation or Moksha (Muktidayakam na tu ranjakam). Sarangadeva's reason, here, is not rational but empirico-inductive. It is that mainly by virtue of its 'gitam’ (singing component), which, like the Yoga system of exercise, needing only one's body as its instrument, music too needing only one’s voice is as self-sufficient and autonomous as the ultimate Reality itself (Swayamev Rajate). In the hierarchy (a distinctively ancient Indian insistence) of arts, singing is the highest and unique because in spite of being heard by the auditory sense, it affects our 'reflective sensibility' and transports us to the virtual world of melodic and rhythmic forms. Forms, as against their particular illustrations, are abstract universals. Ultimate Reality is also a Form-all comprehensive and internally harmonious. However, pure Form, whether melodic or religious or even rational like that of triangularity, is almost impossible to concentrate on. Realizing this practical difficulty, Indian scriptures and the world's first Grammarian-linguist, Acharya Panini, framed a composite sound as the manifestation of the ultimate musical Form. This purely formal-because devoid of all meaning, sound is that of 'om', spelt, in Sanskrit as a conjunction (sandhi) of 'a'+'u'+'m'. For Indian musicologists and musicians, ‘om’ is the perfect manifestation of the Sound-God or ‘Nada-Brahman’ because, 1. Its composite nature resembles God, as a harmony of 'sat', 'chit', and 'ananda'; and 2. The composite sound is self-existent as its all three components-two vowels, i.e. ‘a’, ‘u’, and one consonant i.e. ‘m’, can be and are pronounced just as they originally are, -un-elongated and un-vitiated and therefore pure. This is the reason why every recital of Indian classical vocal music is begun with an elaborate rendering of 'om' as an invocation to Sound-God or ‘Nada-Brahman’. Scholarly and authentic, this ancient Indian approach to music, is undoubtedly the earliest and original. My observation is that its main contentions like Sharang Dev’s insistence that of the three components of music, ‘gitam’ or singing is the highest, have only been translated and never argued for. In this presentation my good intention is to provide much needed rational support for making these key statements in this unparalleled Indian text, indubitable and unquestionable. (shrink)

'Caractère', 'densité', 'texture', 'bloc', 'trait', 'profil', 'figure' ou encore 'énergie'... : ces termes, s'ils sont souvent convoqués dans le discours musicologique se référant aux oeuvres des XXe et XXIe siècles, résistent à la clôture d'une définition. De telles notions mobilisent différentes dimensions de l'écriture mais aussi - et peut-être surtout - cherchent chacune à désigner un aspect qualitatif du musical, ce 'devenir illimité' du discours, difficile à neutraliser et à rationaliser. Le colloque organisé à l'Université Paris 8, intitulé 'Manières d'être (...) du musical', dont nous éditons aujourd'hui les actes, proposait ainsi de 'connaître l'individu à travers l'individuation plutôt que l'individuation à partir de l'individu' en interrogeant les outils compositionnels et les catégories qualitatives de l'écriture ayant pour fonction de différencier le musical en comportements ou manières d'être singuliers'"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Nearly all listeners consider the subjective aspects of music, such as its emotional tone, to have primary importance. But contemporary philosophers often downplay, ignore, or even deny such aspects of experience. Moreover, traditional philosophies of music try to decontextualize it. Using music as an example, this paper explores the structure of qualitative experience, demonstrating that it is multi-layer emergent, non-compositional, enacted, and situation dependent, among other non-Cartesian properties. Our explanations draw on recent work in cognitive science, including (...) blending, image schemas, and sensory memory, as well as on phenomenology. A hierarchical structure transformation based complexity theory is applied to obtain a non-linear dynamical systems explanation of qualia and emotion that respects phenomenological insights about time, including retention and protention. The complexity measure provides both a metric structure and a potential function, on spaces of pieces that are constructed using given elements and transformations, with weights that reflect their cognitive difficulty. However, the approach is not reductionist; using improvisation and the evolution of musical notation as data, we argue that situatedness, especially enactment and social context, are key aspects of musical consciousness. (shrink)

This is a review of Gregory Scott's book on Aristotle's Poetics, which he argues, with excellent and well-defended reasons, has the much narrow focus of dramatic musical art.

Theodor W. Adorno is a gigantic figure in musical aesthetics, and many still consider his views relevant, not only for analyzing the modernist music he was inspired by and that he inspired himself, but also for more contemporary developments in classical music. John Adams is arguably the foremost contemporary composer who has tried to break away from the modernist musical language that was still very much dominant when he began his career as a composer, and he has been (...) very outspoken about his antipathy toward the Schoenbergian-inspired compositional techniques that are at the background of Adorno’s musical aesthetics, particularly his Philosophy of New Music. By presenting an interpretation of Adams’ music that draws on some key aspects of John Dewey’s aesthetics—aesthetic experience, rhythm, and his appreciation of common culture—I raise the question of how relevant Adorno’s seminal book still is for understanding the aesthetics of the new music of today. (shrink)

The Body in Sound, Music and Performance brings together cutting-edge contributions from women working on and researching contemporary sound practice. This highly interdisciplinary book features a host of international contributors and places emphasis on developments beyond the western world, including movements growing across Latin America. Within the book, the body is situated as both the site and centre for knowledge making and creative production. Chapters explore how insightful theoretical analysis, new methods, innovative practises, and sometimes within the socio-cultural conditions (...) of racism, sexism and classicism, the body can rise above, reshape and deconstruct understood ideas about performance practices, composition, and listening/sensing. This book will be of interest to both practitioners and researchers in the fields of sonic arts, sound design, music, acoustics and performance. (shrink)

First things -- Emanuel Bach and the allure of the irrational -- Between enlightenment and romance -- Beethoven : confronting the past -- Fragments -- Death masks.

Decomposition is a bracing, revisionary, and provocative inquiry into music—from Beethoven to Duke Ellington, from Conlon Nancarrow to Evelyn Glennie—as a personal and cultural experience: how it is composed, how it is idiosyncratically perceived by critics and reviewers, and why we listen to it the way we do. Andrew Durkin, best known as the leader of the West Coast–based Industrial Jazz Group, is singular for his insistence on asking tough questions about the complexity of our presumptions about music (...) and about listening, especially in the digital age. In this winning and lucid study he explodes the age-old concept of musical composition as the work of individual genius, arguing instead that in both its composition and reception music is fundamentally a collaborative enterprise that comes into being only through mediation. Drawing on a rich variety of examples—Big Jay McNeely’s “Deacon’s Hop,” Biz Markie’s “Alone Again,” George Antheil’s Ballet Mécanique, Frank Zappa’s “While You Were Art,” and Pauline Oliveros’s “Tuning Meditation,” to name only a few—Durkin makes clear that our appreciation of any piece of music is always informed by neuroscientific, psychological, technological, and cultural factors. How we listen to music, he maintains, might have as much power to change it as music might have to change how we listen. (shrink)

Foreword: Mathesis as a philosophy of the beauty of music -- The constructive relationships between music and mathematics : the Pythagorean conception of universal music and its spread in the worldview of later periods -- Semantic interpretation of the interaction between music and mathematics : mystic middle ages and the sacral baroque -- Constructive aspects of the interaction between music and other arts -- Musica mathematica in practice : aspects of analysis -- Constructive aspects of (...) music composition -- Semantic aspects of music composition -- The mathematized musical graph -- Implications of modern mathematical theories. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Middlebrow takes a fresh look at the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century music. Offering an alternative to the traditional focus on either "highbrow" modernism on the one hand or "lowbrow" popular music on the other, its novel view centers on the wealth of previously overlooked products and practices that bridged the space between these cultural extremes. While seminal attempts to recover middlebrow culture came from literary critics and historians, middlebrow studies (...) is now a burgeoning field within musicology. As the first essay collection on this topic, this handbook has two aims: first, it seeks to explore the middlebrow as a historical phenomenon, excavating the kinds of critical writings, marketing practices, and compositional styles with which it was associated. By reanimating a range of musical practices and products-from symphonic concerts to Broadway musicals, opera criticism to rock journalism, and modern jazz to pop-rock-the contributors investigate how artists, critics, and audiences breached the divide from both above and below. In the process, the handbook chapters push the boundaries of middlebrow studies and demonstrate the category's relevance outside of the mid-twentieth-century Anglophone world by delving into the nineteenth century, interrogating the present day, and looking to Germany, Russia, and beyond. The handbook's second aim is to complicate the disciplinary divisions that have flowed from the entrenched oppositions between high and low genres. Breaking new ground by bringing together scholars of classical and popular music, these chapters trace common middlebrow themes across traditional disciplinary boundaries. Across this broad vista, contributors account for the kinds of syntheses, overlaps, and juxtapositions that made the cultural middle such a richly textured and endlessly contested terrain. Keywords: middlebrow, music history, nineteenth century, twentieth century, popular music studies, modernism. (shrink)

The aesthetics of imperfection emphasises spontaneity, disruption, process and energy over formal perfection and is often ignored by many commentators or seen only in improvisation. This comprehensive collection is the first time imperfection has been explored across all kinds of musical performance, whether improvisation or interpretation of compositions. Covering music, visual art, dance, comedy, architecture and design, it addresses the meaning, experience, and value of improvisation and spontaneous creation across different artistic media. A distinctive feature of the volume is (...) that it brings together contributions from theoreticians and practitioners, presenting a wider range of perspectives on the issues involved. Contributors look at performance and practice across Western and non-Western musical, artistic and craft forms. Composers and non-performing artists offer a perspective on what is 'imperfect' or improvisatory within their work, contributing further dimensions to the discourse. The Aesthetics of Imperfection in Music and the Arts features 39 chapters organised into eight sections and written by a diverse group of scholars and performers. They consider divergent definitions of aesthetics, employing both 18th-century philosophy and more recent socially and historically situated conceptions making this an essential, up-to-date resource for anyone working on either side of the perfection-imperfection debate. (shrink)

One hundred years after Luigi Russolo's "The Art of Noises," this book exposes a cross-section of the current motivations, activities, thoughts, and reflections of composers, performers, and artists who work with noise in all of its many forms. The book's focus is the practice of noise and its relationship to music, and in particular the role of noise as musical material--as form, as sound, as notation or interface, as a medium for listening, as provocation, as data. Its contributors are (...) first and foremost practitioners, which inevitably turns attention toward how and why noise is made and its potential role in listening and perceiving. Contributors include Peter Ablinger, Sebastian Berweck, Aaron Cassidy, Marko Ciciliani, Nick Collins, Aaron Einbond, Matthias Haenisch, Alec Hall, Martin Iddon, Bryan Jacobs, Phil Julian, Michael Maierhof, Joan Arnau Pàmies, and James Whitehead (JLIAT). The book also features a collection of short responses to a two-question "interview"--"what is noise (music) to you?" and "why do you make it?"--by some of the leading musicians working with noise today. Their work spans a wide range of artistic practice, including instrumental, vocal, and electronic music; improvisation; notated composition; theater; sound installation; DIY; and software development. Interview subjects include Eryck Abecassis, Franck Bedrossian, Antoine Chessex, Ryan Jordan, Alice Kemp (Germseed), George Lewis, Lasse Marhaug, Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje, Diemo Schwarz, Ben Thigpen, Kasper Toeplitz, and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay."--Page 4 of covers. (shrink)

What is music for? How does it work? What can it teach us? Intuitively, we feel there must be answers to such questions, but they tend to be scattered throughout a wide range of different areas of study, from acoustics to music history, from psychology to composition. In this brilliant and thought-provoking book Maconie seeks the answers to these and other fundamental questions about music, integrating music and appropriate scientific research in a new evaluation of (...) his topic. In so doing, he argues passionately for a reappraisal of music, not as mere entertainment, but as something basic to our experience of listening and communicating in sound, and an art which has exerted a profound influence on society. (shrink)

Rejecting the need for theories about theories, this book suggests that one can find the meaning of classical musical compositions by attending just "to the facts themselves." Seeking to promote critical and intelligent appreciation of music, the author discusses a range of classical works, pointing out what he believes the composer is communicating and the way in which it is communicated. He examines (and offers examples of) musical games, symbolism, musical tension, melody and melodic line. The latter half of (...) the work is devoted to applying the preceding topics to specific works by Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, Ravel, and other composers. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

The Western history of aesthetics is characterised by tension between theory and practice. Musicians listen, play, and then listen more profoundly in order to play differently, adapt the body, and sense the environment. They become deeply involved in the sensorial qualities of music practice. Artistic practice refers to the original meaning of aesthetics - the senses. Whereas Baumgarten and Goethe explored the relationship between sensibility and reason, sensation and thinking, later philosophers of aesthetics deemed the sensorial to be confused (...) and unreliable and instead prioritised a cognitive or objective approach. Written by authors from the fields of philosophy, composition, performance, and artistic practice, 'Sensorial Aesthetics in Music Practices' repositions aesthetics as a domain of the sensible and explores the interaction between artists, life, and environment. Aesthetics becomes a field of sensorial and embodied experience involving temporal and spatial influences, implicit knowledge, and human characteristics. (shrink)

Music as Agency: Diversities of Perspectives on Artistic Citizenship focuses on the concept, application, interpretation and manifestation of Artistic Citizenship in diverse contexts. The key concepts that the book tackles are: Cultural experience, artistic practice, musical identities, equity, democracy, community, activism, resistance and empathy. In giving an overview of aspects of the compound concept of artistic citizenship, Akuno and Westvall present the outcome of research and interrogation of practice by a global network of educator-researchers from Africa, the Americas, Asia (...) and Europe. The book articulates notions of artistic citizenship, coming up with the term artizenship as a derivative of the composite term. It further explains and analyses practical ways of perceiving and relating to art spaces, art practices and arts objects towards belonging, being and becoming in a global space that is disparate, polarised and often alienating, and thus responding to issues such as social justice, identity, participation and inclusion. With a focus on music, the book targets musicians, scholars, educators and enthusiasts keen on gaining a deeper understanding of how music and musicking can influence human interactions towards social integration, trust, cultural awareness and intercultural understanding. (shrink)

Sounding Fragilities enacts a polyphony of writing on contemporary composition, music and performing arts in relation to music theatre. Co-edited by a theatre and performance scholar and by a composer and artistic researcher, this anthology considers its field of investigation through the lens of positionalities. Irene Lehmann and Pia Palme invite readers into intimate encounters with an artist's practice, feminist and queer perspectives, and personal explorations into aspects of musicology, theatre studies, technology and ecology. By presenting female* (...) composers who write with/through/about their own practice, Sounding Fragilities is a remarkable contribution to an interdisciplinary debate around the agency of artistic research. With this synthesis, the editors evaluate how moving beyond the binary of art and science reveals the rich yet fragile territories of artistic knowledge-production and literacy in music theatre. Sounding Fragilities: An Anthology brings together essays, discussions and interventions on contemporary music, dance and music theatre to offer a polyphony of new approaches to listening, watching, composing and performing. Artistic and academic researchers present reflections and insights into the fragilities of artistic materials, collaborations and the communities that build around live performances. Challenging the idea of isolated composers, choreographers, audience members and academic researchers, they stress instead the interconnectedness of these positions as indispensable elements of thriving performance and research. This feature of all live performance is envisaged by several of the book's contributors as linked to political, democratic thought and ecological or feminist thinking. (shrink)

"Without music, life would be an error."—Friedrich Nietzsche In his youth, Friedrich Nietzsche yearned to become a great composer and wrote many pieces of music. He later claimed to be "the most musical of all philosophers." Yet most books on Nietzsche fail to explore the importance of music for his thought. _Nietzsche and Music_ provides the first in-depth examination of the fundamental significance of music for Nietzsche's life and work. Nietzsche's views on music are essential (...) for understanding his philosophy as a whole. Part biography and part critical examination, Georges Liébert brilliantly demonstrates that despite failed attempts at a professional career as composer, Nietzsche never fully removed himself from the world of music, but instead, became a composer of philosophy, utilizing the musical form as a template for his own writings and creative thought. Liébert's study surveys Nietzsche's opinions about particular composers and compositions, as well as his more theoretical writings on music and its relation to the other arts. He also explores Nietzsche's listening habits, his playing and style of composition, and his many contacts in the musical world, including his controversial and contentious relationship with Richard Wagner. For Nietzsche, music gave access to a realm of wisdom that transcended thought. Music was Nietzsche's great solace; in his last years, it was his refuge from madness. A virtuoso exploration of this little-known but crucial aspect of Nietzsche's life and work, this volume will be of enormous value to scholars of philosophy, music, aesthetics, and literature. (shrink)

v. 1. Meta-variations : studies in the foundations of musical thought -- v. 2. Compose yourself : a manual for the young.