Download or read book Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge written by Lawrence Kramer and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this pathbreaking new book, Lawrence Kramer extends the theoretical and scholarly frontiers of musicology with every chapter, each of which explores a different case study in depth. In short, [he] demonstrates repeatedly that classical music is a far more significant force in history than its champions (who want music to transcend 'mere' social formations) usually allow."--Susan McClary, author of Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality "Kramer continues his project to steer the criticism of Western art music onto the paths of contemporary intellectual discourse. No one is better equipped for the task: Kramer's range is extraordinary, his scholarship impeccable, his arguments incisive. But above all, his values are humane. He cares passionately about this precious musical heritage, and his commitment can be felt on every page, including the dazzling performative and postmodern epilogue."--Walter Frisch, author of The Early Works of Arnold Schoenberg, 1893-1908 "This book will (I hope) be one of the foundational moments of a thriving and much-needed discourse. Kramer demonstrates the power to interpret that comes with fully integrating up-to-date critical literary theory with musical analysis. The risks he takes are absolutely necessary to our discipline if it is not, along with the music it professes to enshrine, to fade away into total cultural irrelevance and oblivion. Those scholars to whom postmodernism is a liberating and not a frightening concept will welcome this book with uncommon interest."--Robert Fink, founding editor of Repercussions: Critical and Alternative Viewpoints on Music and Scholarship

Download or read book Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge written by Lawrence Kramer and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-04-28 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading cultural theorist and musicologist opens up new possibilities for understanding mainstream Western art music—the "classical" music composed between the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries that is, for many, losing both its prestige and its appeal. When this music is regarded esoterically, removed from real-world interests, it increasingly sounds more evasive than transcendent. Now Lawrence Kramer shows how classical music can take on new meaning and new life when approached from postmodernist standpoints. Kramer draws out the musical implications of contemporary efforts to understand reason, language, and subjectivity in relation to concrete human activities rather than to universal principles. Extending the rethinking of musical expression begun in his earlier Music as Cultural Practice, he regards music not only as an object that invites aesthetic reception but also as an activity that vitally shapes the personal, social, and cultural identities of its listeners. In language accessible to nonspecialists but informative to specialists, Kramer provides an original account of the postmodernist ethos, explains its relationship to music, and explores that relationship in a series of case studies ranging from Haydn and Mendelssohn to Ives and Ravel. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996. A leading cultural theorist and musicologist opens up new possibilities for understanding mainstream Western art music—the "classical" music composed between the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries that is, for many, losing both its prestige and its

Download or read book Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge written by Lawrence Kramer and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-04-28 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading cultural theorist and musicologist opens up new possibilities for understanding mainstream Western art music—the "classical" music composed between the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries that is, for many, losing both its prestige and its appeal. When this music is regarded esoterically, removed from real-world interests, it increasingly sounds more evasive than transcendent. Now Lawrence Kramer shows how classical music can take on new meaning and new life when approached from postmodernist standpoints. Kramer draws out the musical implications of contemporary efforts to understand reason, language, and subjectivity in relation to concrete human activities rather than to universal principles. Extending the rethinking of musical expression begun in his earlier Music as Cultural Practice, he regards music not only as an object that invites aesthetic reception but also as an activity that vitally shapes the personal, social, and cultural identities of its listeners. In language accessible to nonspecialists but informative to specialists, Kramer provides an original account of the postmodernist ethos, explains its relationship to music, and explores that relationship in a series of case studies ranging from Haydn and Mendelssohn to Ives and Ravel. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996. A leading cultural theorist and musicologist opens up new possibilities for understanding mainstream Western art music—the "classical" music composed between the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries that is, for many, losing both its prestige and its

Download or read book Musical Meaning written by Lawrence Kramer and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ranging widely over classical music, jazz, popular music, and film and television music, Musical Meaning uncovers the historical importance of asking about meaning in the lived experience of musical works, styles, and performances. Lawrence Kramer has been a pivotal figure in the development of new resources for understanding music. In this accessible and eloquently written book, he argues boldly that humanistic, not just technical, meaning is a basic force in music history and an indispensable factor in how, where, and when music is heard. He demonstrates that thinking about music can become a vital means of thinking about general questions of meaning, subjectivity, and value. First published in 2001, Musical Meaning anticipates many of the musicological topics of today, including race, performance, embodiment, and media. In addition, Kramer explores music itself as a source of understanding via his composition Revenants for piano, revised for this edition and available on the UC Press website.

Download or read book Why Classical Music Still Matters written by Lawrence Kramer and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2007-05-02 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In lucid and engaging prose, the book explores the sources of classical music's power in a variety of settings, from concert performance to film and TV, from everyday life to the historical trauma of September 11. Addressed to a wide audience, this book will appeal to aficionados and skeptics alike.

Download or read book Opera and Modern Culture written by Lawrence Kramer and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Outstanding. Kramer's scholarship is as impeccable as his insights are at once original and consistently brilliant. The presentation is thorough, and the argument is well anchored in theory, history and musical detail. Kramer's discourse is crystalline and jargon free. The connections from one chapter to another are seamless. The story is, simply stated, a page-turner."—Richard Leppert, editor of Theodor W. Adorno's Essays on Music "Lawrence Kramer's Opera and Modern Culture is remarkable both for its imaginative exploration of important issues and for the rich array of the author's engagements with other thinkers. In particular, by decentering without dismissing the composer (who could dismiss Wagner?), he makes works of reception—productions of Salome on video, uses of the Lohengrin Prelude by Charlie Chaplin and W.E.B. Du Bois—central texts in the process of understanding the phenomenon of opera, rather than footnotes to an idea that he really does dismiss: 'the work itself.'"—James Parakilas, author of Piano Roles: 300 Years of Life with the Piano and Introduction to Opera (forthcoming)

Download or read book Hermeneutics and Music Criticism written by Roger W. H. Savage and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-09-10 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hermeneutics and Music Criticism forges new perspectives on aesthetics, politics and contemporary interpretive strategies. By advancing new insights into the roles judgment and imagination play both in our experiences of music and its critical interpretation, this book reevaluates our current understandings of music’s transformative power. The engagement with critical musicologists and philosophers, including Adorno, Gadamer, and Ricoeur, provides a nuanced analysis of the crucial issues affecting the theory and practice of music criticism. By challenging musical hermeneutics’ deployment as a means of deciphering social values and meanings, Hermeneutics and Music Criticism offers an answer to the long-standing question of how music’s expression of moods and feelings affects us and our relation to the world.

Download or read book Language of the Spirit written by Jan Swafford and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A preeminent composer, music scholar, and biographer presents an engaging and accessible introduction to classical music For many of us, classical music is something serious -- something we study in school, something played by cultivated musicians at fancy gatherings. In Language of the Spirit, renowned music scholar Jan Swafford argues that we have it all wrong: classical music has something for everyone and is accessible to all. Ranging from Gregorian chant to Handel's Messiah, from Vivaldi's The Four Seasons to the postmodern work of Philip Glass, Swafford is an affable and expert guide to the genre. He traces the history of Western music, introduces readers to the most important composers and compositions, and explains the underlying structure and logic of their music. Language of the Spirit is essential reading for anyone who has ever wished to know more about this sublime art.

Download or read book Music after the Fall written by Tim Rutherford-Johnson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017-02-01 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "...the best extant map of our sonic shadowlands, and it has changed how I listen."—Alex Ross, The New Yorker "...an essential survey of contemporary music."—New York Times "…sharp, provacative and always on the money. The listening list alone promises months of fresh discovery, the main text a fresh new way of navigating the world of sound."—The Wire 2017 Music Book of the Year—Alex Ross, The New Yorker Music after the Fall is the first book to survey contemporary Western art music within the transformed political, cultural, and technological environment of the post–Cold War era. In this book, Tim Rutherford-Johnson considers musical composition against this changed backdrop, placing it in the context of globalization, digitization, and new media. Drawing connections with the other arts, in particular visual art and architecture, he expands the definition of Western art music to include forms of composition, experimental music, sound art, and crossover work from across the spectrum, inside and beyond the concert hall. Each chapter is a critical consideration of a wide range of composers, performers, works, and institutions, and develops a broad and rich picture of the new music ecosystem, from North American string quartets to Lebanese improvisers, from electroacoustic music studios in South America to ruined pianos in the Australian outback. Rutherford-Johnson puts forth a new approach to the study of contemporary music that relies less on taxonomies of style and technique than on the comparison of different responses to common themes of permission, fluidity, excess, and loss.

Download or read book Rationalizing Culture written by Georgina Born and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1995-09-08 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a year-long participant-observer, Born studied the social and cultural economy of an institution for research and production of avant-garde and computer music. She gives a unique portrait of IRCAM's composers, computer scientists, technicians, and secretaries, interrogating the effects of the cultural philosophy of the controversial avant-garde composer, Pierre Boulez, who directed the institute until 1992.

Download or read book Postmodern Music Postmodern Thought written by Judy Lochhead and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-08 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is postmodern music and how does it differ from earlier styles, including modernist music? What roles have electronic technologies and sound production played in defining postmodern music? Has postmodern music blurred the lines between high and popular music? Addressing these and other questions, this ground-breaking collection gathers together for the first time essays on postmodernism and music written primarily by musicologists, covering a wide range of musical styles including concert music, jazz, film music, and popular music. Topics include: the importance of technology and marketing in postmodern music; the appropriation and reworking of Western music by non-Western bands; postmodern characteristics in the music of Górecki, Rochberg, Zorn, and Bolcom, as well as Björk and Wu Tang Clan; issues of music and race in such films as The Bridges of Madison County, Batman, Bullworth, and He Got Game; and comparisons of postmodern architecture to postmodern music. Also includes 20 musical examples.

Download or read book The Postmodern Condition written by Jean-François Lyotard and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1984 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book it explores science and technology, makes connections between these epistemic, cultural, and political trends, and develops profound insights into the nature of our postmodernity.

Download or read book Conventional Wisdom written by Susan McClary and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: McClary, "offers an analysis of our own cultural moment in terms of two dominant traditions: tonality and blues."--Jacket.

Download or read book Beautiful Monsters written by Michael Long and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beautiful Monsters explores the ways in which "classical" music made its way into late twentieth-century American mainstream culture—in pop songs, movie scores, and print media. Beginning in the 1960s, Michael Long's entertaining and illuminating book surveys a complex cultural field and draws connections between "classical music" (as the phrase is understood in the United States) and selected "monster hits" of popular music. Addressing such wide-ranging subjects as surf music, Yiddish theater, Hollywood film scores, Freddie Mercury, Alfred Hitchcock, psychedelia, rap, disco, and video games, Long proposes a holistic musicology in which disparate musical elements might be brought together in dynamic and humane conversation. Beautiful Monsters brilliantly considers the ways in which critical commonplaces like nostalgia, sentiment, triviality, and excess might be applied with greater nuance to musical media and media reception. It takes into account twentieth-century media's capacity to suggest visual and acoustical depth and the redemptive possibilities that lie beyond the surface elements of filmic narrative or musical style, showing us what a truly global view of late twentieth-century music in its manifold cultural and social contexts might be like.

Download or read book Remixing Music Studies written by Ananay Aguilar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-07-30 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where is the academic study of music today, and what paths should it take into the future? Should we be looking at how music relates to society and constructs meaning through it, rather than how it transcends the social? Can we ‘remix’ our discipline and attempt to address all musics on an equal basis, without splitting ourselves in advance into subgroups of ‘musicologists’, ‘theorists’, and ‘ethnomusicologists’? These are some of the crucial issues that Nicholas Cook has raised since he emerged in the 1990s as one of the UK’s leading and most widely read voices in critical musicology. In this book, collaborators and former students of Cook pursue these questions and others raised by his work—from notation, historiography, and performance to the place of music in multimedia forms such as virtual reality and video games, analysing both how it can bring people together and the ways in which it has failed to do so.

Download or read book Ubiquitous Musics written by Marta García Quiñones and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-17 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ubiquitous Musics offers a multidisciplinary approach to the pervasive presence of music in everyday life. The essays address a variety of situations in which music is present alongside other activities and does not demand focused attention from (sometimes involuntary) listeners. The contributors present different theoretical perspectives on the increasing ubiquity of music and its implications for the experience of listening. The collection consists of nine essays divided into three sections: Histories, Technologies, and Spaces. The first section addresses the historical origins of functional music and the debates on how reproduced music, including a wide range of styles and genres, spread so quickly across so many environments. The second section focuses on more contemporary sound technologies, including mobile phones in India, the role of visible playback technology in film, and listening to portable digital players. The final section reflects on settings such as malls, stores, gyms, offices and cars in which ubiquitous musics are often present, but rarely thought about. This last section - and ultimately the whole collection - seeks to foster a wider understanding of listening practices by lending a fresh, critical ear.

Download or read book Creator Spirit written by Steven R. Guthrie and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Art is often viewed as being inherently spiritual. But what does it mean to describe an experience of art or beauty as "spiritual"? Is there a relationship between the spiritual experience a person has in the presence of a work of art and the Holy Spirit of Christian faith? Skilled theologian, musician, and educator Steven Guthrie examines areas of overlap between spirituality, human creativity, and the arts with the goal of sharpening and refining how we speak and think about the Holy Spirit. By exploring various connections between art and spirituality, he helps Christians better understand the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and offers a clear, engaging theology of the arts. The book includes a foreword by renowned theologian and musician Jeremy Begbie.