Whose Music? combines historical, musicological, and sociological materials and styles of analysis in ways that connect to the field of sociology. The analyses of social class systems presented here speak in translatable ways to analyses of musical forms. Not only that, both are connected to an understanding of the organizations through which works are distributed to their audiences. Perhaps most importantly for the contemporary reader, this book depicts the part of the process by which dominant class groups justify their domination--cultural and otherwise.
Music in Groups happens all the time: in the street, the classroom, in music colleges, community centres, hospitals, prisons, churches and concert halls; at raves, weddings, music festivals, public ceremonies, music therapy sessions, group music lessons, concerts and rehearsals. Some group musicking seems to 'work' (and play) better than others; some sessions feel exhausting even if things are going well; and at other times, we can't begin to explain the complex musical and relational textures of group music work to funders, employers, friends, colleagues, or line managers. In this book, music therapist Mercédès Pavlicevic develops a broad-based discourse to describe, analyse and guide the practice of group musicking, drawing on her own extensive experience. The text is illustrated with vignettes drawn from a range of formal and informal settings that include spontaneous public occasions, collective rituals, special and mainstream education, music therapy, the concert hall, the music appreciation group and community work. This book makes you think about balancing individual and group needs, the development of group time, dealing with over-enthusiastic performers who 'hog' the group sound, undercurrents in music groups, the complications of dealing with institutions, preparing music listening programmes and buying instruments for group work - if you're involved in any kind of group musicking, this book is for you.
The approach of this book, first published in 1982, is multi-disciplinary. Popular music, it is argued, is not only a musical but also a social phenomenon; the criteria needed to assess it are different from those used in the appreciation of ‘classical’ music. The first section of this guide is devoted to setting out just what those criteria should be. A second section puts forward bases for course construction that are detailed and flexible. A final section provides a list of further resources.
When Dmitri Tiomkin thanked Johannes Brahms, Johann Strauss, Richard Strauss, and Richard Wagner upon accepting the Academy Award for his score of The High and the Mighty in 1954, he was honoring a romantic style that had characterized Hollywood's golden age of film composition from the mid-1930s to the 1950s. Exploring elements of romanticism in film scores of composers ranging from Erich Korngold to Bernard Herrmann, Caryl Flinn argues that films tended to link music to the sense of an idealized, lost past. Just as the score of Gone with the Wind captured the grandeur of the antebellum South, others prompted flashbacks or suggested moments of emotional intensity and sensuality. Maintaining that many films treated this utopian impulse as a female trait, Flinn investigates the ways Hollywood genre films--particularly film noir and melodrama--sustained the connection between music and nostalgia, utopia, and femininity. The author situates Hollywood film scores within a romantic aesthetic ideology, noting compositional and theoretical affinities between the film composers and Wagner, with emphasis on authorship, creativity, and femininity. Pointing to the lasting impact of romanticism on film music, Flinn draws from poststructuralist, Marxist, feminist, and psychoanalytic criticism to offer fresh insights into the broad theme of music as an excessive utopian condition.
"Drawing on a series of interviews with musicians aged between fifteen and fifty, Lucy Green explores the nature of pop musicians' informal learning practices, attitudes and values, the extent to which these altered over the last forty years, and the experiences of the musicians in formal music education"--Jacket
The Indiscerniblity of Identicals is the principle that if two objects are absolutely identical then they must be indistinguishable from one another with respect to all of their properties. But does that include the context of the identical objects? The notion of identical gives rise to many philosophical problems, including: 1. What does it mean for an object to be the same as itself? 2. If x and y are identical (are the same thing), must they always be identical? Are they necessarily identical? 3. What does it mean for an object to be the same, if it changes over time? (Is applet the same as applet+1?) 4. If an object's parts are entirely replaced over time, in what way is it the same?
Music/Ideology is a response to the question: Must the practice of music analysis and music theory always reinscribe the ideology of aesthetic autonomy? And, if not, under what circumstances does it reinscribe that ideology? The responses to these questions should appeal not only to music and cultural theorists, but also to a larger audience engaged in critical theory. These essays serve as an introduction to the broad array of issues arising from approaches that represent the full spectrum, from music-theoretical to marxist and feminist issues. Such questions are of vital importance, and not only to those who are engaged in establishing a connection among music theory, music analysis, and aesthetic ideology. Music/Ideology presents today's most interesting critical thinkers in postmodern theory and music theory, introducing an interdisciplinary approach and covering a wide range of subjects - both by implication and explication.
This work offers students a complete overview of key writings on music education, from the ancient Greeks to contemporary American thought, with emphasis on writings from the last 100 years. Designed to complement the standard music pedagogy course, the selections range from Plato's Republic through William Billing's writings on Colonial American Music Education through the 2001 advocacy for music education. In five sections, each part of the book is introduced by a brief essay giving an overview of the material covered and information placing it within the critical context of its day. Individual articles are also prefaced with informative headnotes.
The music of the peoples of South and Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean has never received a comprehensive treatment in English until this multi-volume work. Taking a sociocultural and human-centered approach, Music in Latin America and the Caribbean gathers the best scholarship from writers all over the world to cover in depth the musical legacies of indigenous peoples, creoles, African descendants, Iberian colonizers, and other immigrant groups that met and mixed in the New World. Within a history marked by cultural encounters and dislocations, music emerges as the powerful tool that negotiates identities, enacts resistance, performs belief, and challenges received aesthetics. This work, more than two decades in the making, was conceived as part of "The Universe of Music: A History" project, initiated by and developed in cooperation with the International Music Council, with the goals of empowering Latin Americans and Caribbeans to shape their own musical history and emphasizing the role that music plays in human life. The four volumes that constitute this work are structured as parts of a single conception and gather 150 contributions by more than 100 distinguished scholars representing 36 countries. Volume 1, Performing Beliefs: Indigenous Peoples of South America, Central America, and Mexico, focuses on the inextricable relationships between worldviews and musical experience in the current practices of indigenous groups. Worldviews are built into, among other things, how music is organized and performed, how musical instruments are constructed and when they are played, choreographic formations, the structure of songs, the assignment of gender to instruments, and ritual patterns. Two CDs with 44 recorded examples illustrate the contributions to this rich volume.
