Critical Musicological Reflections

Critical Musicological Reflections

Author: Professor Stan Hawkins

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2012-09-01

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 1409455068

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This collection of original essays is in tribute to the work of Derek Scott on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. As one of the leading lights in Critical Musicology, Scott has helped shape the epistemological direction for music research since the late 1980s. There is no doubt that the path taken by the critical musicologist has been a tricky one, leading to new conceptions, interactions, and heated debates during the past two decades. Changes in musicology during the closing decades of the twentieth century prompted the establishment of new sets of theoretical methods that probed at the social and cultural relevance of music, as much as its self-referentiality. All the scholars contributing to this book have played a role in the general paradigmatic shift that ensued in the wake of Kerman's call for change in the 1980s. Setting out to address a range of approaches to theorizing music and promulgating modes of analysis across a wide range of repertories, the essays in this collection can be read as a coming of age of critical musicology through its active dialogue with other disciplines such as sociology, feminism, ethnomusicology, history, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, aesthetics, media studies, film music studies, and gender studies. The volume provides music researchers and graduate students with an up-to-date authoritative reference to all matters dealing with the state of critical musicology today.


Greek Reflections on the Nature of Music

Greek Reflections on the Nature of Music

Author: Flora R. Levin

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2009-04-27

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 0521518903

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this book, Flora Levin explores how and why music was so important to the ancient Greeks. She examines the distinctions that they drew between the theory of music as an art ruled by number and the theory wherein number is held to be ruled by the art of music. These perspectives generated more expansive theories, particularly the idea that the cosmos is a mirror-image of music's structural elements and, conversely, that music by virtue of its cosmic elements - time, motion, and the continuum - is itself a mirror-image of the cosmos. These opposing perspectives gave rise to two opposing schools of thought, the Pythagorean and the Aristoxenian. Levin argues that the clash between these two schools could never be reconciled because the inherent conflict arises from two different worlds of mathematics. Her book shows how the Greeks' appreciation of the profundity of music's interconnections with philosophy, mathematics, and logic led to groundbreaking intellectual achievements that no civilization has ever matched.


The Notation Is Not the Music

The Notation Is Not the Music

Author: Barthold Kuijken

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2013-09-13

Total Pages: 142

ISBN-13: 0253010683

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Written by a leading authority and artist of the historical transverse flute, The Notation Is Not the Music offers invaluable insight into the issues of historically informed performance and the parameters—and limitations—of notation-dependent performance. As Barthold Kuijken illustrates, performers of historical music should consider what is written on the page as a mere steppingstone for performance. Only by continual examination and reexamination of the sources to discover original intent can an early music practitioner come close to authentic performance.


Authenticities

Authenticities

Author: Peter Kivy

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-09-05

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 1501731637

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"In his latest book on the aesthetics of music, Peter Kivy presents an argument not for authenticity but for authenticities of performance, including authenticities of intention, sound, practice, and the authenticity of personal interpretation in performance.... As usual, Kivy's work is beautifully written, well argued, and provocative."—Notes"Kivy has provided a sorely needed framework for all future discussion of the authenticity matter. This is his best book, a major contribution to performance studies and to musical aesthetics; likely it will be studied and cited for generations."—Choice"Written in lively prose, with a keen sense of reality, [this volume] ought to be of interest not only to philosophers and musicologists, but to all serious lovers of music."—Roger Scruton, Times Literary Supplement"The consistent theme running through Kivy's book is the need for interpretation as the personal authenticity and authority of the performer against the ideology both of the composer as genius and of the puritanical devotion to the authority of the text of the early music devotees.... This is a most valuable book, one which constantly surprises and delights through its philosophical insights and informed musical understanding."—British Journal of Aesthetics


Music Is History

Music Is History

Author: Questlove

Publisher: Abrams

Published: 2021-10-19

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1647001846

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

New York Times bestselling Music Is History combines Questlove’s deep musical expertise with his curiosity about history, examining America over the past fifty years—now in paperback Focusing on the years 1971 to the present, Questlove finds the hidden connections in the American tapes, whether investigating how the blaxploitation era reshaped Black identity or considering the way disco took an assembly-line approach to Black genius. And these critical inquiries are complemented by his own memories as a music fan and the way his appetite for pop culture taught him about America. A history of the last half-century and an intimate conversation with one of music’s most influential and original voices, Music Is History is a singular look at contemporary America.


Ways of Hearing

Ways of Hearing

Author: Scott Burnham

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2023-04-04

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 0691230684

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An outstanding anthology in which notable musicians, artists, scientists, thinkers, poets, and more—from Gustavo Dudamel and Carrie Mae Weems to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Paul Muldoon—explore the influence of music on their lives and work Contributors include: Laurie Anderson ● Jamie Barton ● Daphne A. Brooks ● Edgar Choueiri ● Jeff Dolven ● Gustavo Dudamel ● Edward Dusinberre ● Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim ● Frank Gehry ● James Ginsburg ● Ruth Bader Ginsburg ● Jane Hirshfield ● Pico Iyer ● Alexander Kluge ● Nathaniel Mackey ● Maureen N. McLane ● Alicia Hall Moran ● Jason Moran ● Paul Muldoon ● Elaine Pagels ● Robert Pinsky ● Richard Powers ● Brian Seibert ● Arnold Steinhardt ● Susan Stewart ● Abigail Washburn ● Carrie Mae Weems ● Susan Wheeler ● C. K. Williams ● Wu Fei What happens when extraordinary creative spirits—musicians, poets, critics, and scholars, as well as an architect, a visual artist, a filmmaker, a scientist, and a legendary Supreme Court justice—are asked to reflect on their favorite music? The result is Ways of Hearing, a diverse collection that explores the ways music shapes us and our shared culture. These acts of musical witness bear fruit through personal essays, conversations and interviews, improvisatory meditations, poetry, and visual art. They sound the depths of a remarkable range of musical genres, including opera, jazz, bluegrass, and concert music both classical and contemporary. This expansive volume spans styles and subjects, including Pico Iyer’s meditations on Handel, Arnold Steinhardt’s thoughts on Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge, and Laurie Anderson and Edgar Choueiri’s manifesto for spatial music. Richard Powers discusses the one thing about music he’s never told anyone, Daphne Brooks draws sonic connections between Toni Morrison and Cécile McLorin Salvant, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg reveals what she thinks is the sexiest duet in opera. Poems interspersed throughout further expand how we can imagine and respond to music. Ways of Hearing is a book for our times that celebrates the infinite ways music enhances our lives.


Reflections on American Music

Reflections on American Music

Author: College Music Society

Publisher: Pendragon Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 9781576470701

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Wright -- "A closed fist" from Spirals (for violin, viola, and cello) / Judith Lang Zaimont.


Music and the Origins of Language

Music and the Origins of Language

Author: Downing A. Thomas

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1995-06-15

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 0521473071

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This study analyses reflections on music and considers ways in which it facilitates links between language and meaning.


The Castrato

The Castrato

Author: Martha Feldman

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2016-08-02

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 0520292448

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Castrato is a nuanced exploration of why innumerable boys were castrated for singing between the mid-sixteenth and late-nineteenth centuries. It shows that the entire foundation of Western classical singing, culminating in bel canto, was birthed from an unlikely and historically unique set of desires, public and private, aesthetic, economic, and political. In Italy, castration for singing was understood through the lens of Catholic blood sacrifice as expressed in idioms of offering and renunciation and, paradoxically, in satire, verbal abuse, and even the symbolism of the castrato’s comic cousin Pulcinella. Sacrifice in turn was inseparable from the system of patriarchy—involving teachers, patrons, colleagues, and relatives—whereby castrated males were produced not as nonmen, as often thought nowadays, but as idealized males. Yet what captivated audiences and composers—from Cavalli and Pergolesi to Handel, Mozart, and Rossini—were the extraordinary capacities of castrato voices, a phenomenon ultimately unsettled by Enlightenment morality. Although the castrati failed to survive, their musicality and vocality have persisted long past their literal demise.


Contemporary Composers On Contemporary Music

Contemporary Composers On Contemporary Music

Author: Elliott Schwartz

Publisher: Da Capo Press

Published: 2009-06-16

Total Pages: 586

ISBN-13: 0786748338

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This anthology of essays, interviews, and autobiographical pieces provides an invaluable overview of the evolution of contemporary music—from chromaticism, serialism, and indeterminacy to jazz, vernacular, electronic, and non-Western influences. Featuring classic essays by Stravinsky, Stockhausen, and Reich, as well as writings by lesser-known but equally innovative composers such as Jack Beeson, Richard Maxfield, and T. J. Anderson, this collection covers a broad range of styles and approaches. Here you will find Busoni's influential "Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music"; Partch's exploration of a new notation system; Babbitt's defense of advanced composition in his controversial "Who Cares If You Listen?"; and Pauline Oliveros's meditations on sound. Now updated with fifteen new composers including Michael Tippet, György Ligeti, Gunther Schuller, Ben Johnston, Sofia Gubaidulina, and William Bolcom, this important book gathers together forty-nine pieces—many out of print and some newly written for this volume—which serve as a documentary history of twentieth-century music, in theory and practice. Impassioned, provocative, and eloquent, these writings are as exciting and diverse as the music they discuss.