Download or read book Stockhausen Serves Imperialism and Other Articles written by Cornelius Cardew and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Stockhausen Serves Imperialism and Other Articles written by Cornelius Cardew and published by . This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A notorious, influential and radical critique of the avant-garde music of Stockhausen and Cage, by maverick composer Cornelius Cardew Originally published in 1974, Stockhausen Serves Imperialism is a collection of essays by the English avant-garde composer Cornelius Cardew that provides a Marxist and class critique of two of the more revered composers of the postwar era: Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage. A former assistant to Stockhausen and an early champion of Cage, Cardew provides a cutting rebuke of the composers, their work and their ideological positions (Cage's staged anarchism and Stockhausen's theatrical mysticism, in particular). Cardew considers the role of these composers and their works within the development of the 20th-century avant-garde, which he saw as reinforcing an imperialist order rather than spotlighting the struggles of the working class or spurring revolution against bourgeois oppression. Cardew's early works do not escape his own scrutiny, with the book containing critiques and repudiations of his canonical works from the 1960s and early 1970s: Treatise and The Great Learning. After abandoning the avant-garde, Cardew devoted his work to the people's struggle, creating music in service of his radical politics. This music mostly took the form of class-conscious arrangements of folk songs and melodic piano works with such titles as "Revolution is the Main Trend" and "Smash the Social Contract." Cardew maintained a critical cultural stance throughout his life, later going on to denounce David Bowie and punk rock as fascist. He was killed by a hit-and-run driver in 1981--a death that some speculate could have been an assassination by the English government's MI5. Supplementing Cardew's writings are two essays by his Scratch Orchestra collaborators Rod Eley and John Tilbury.
Download or read book Interviews with American Composers written by Barney Childs and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 737 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1972-73, Barney Childs embarked on an ambitious attempt to survey the landscape of new American concert music. He recorded freewheeling conversations with fellow composers, most of them under forty, all of them important but most not yet famous. Though unable to publish the interviews in his lifetime, Childs had gathered invaluable dialogues with the likes of Robert Ashley, Olly Wilson, Harold Budd, Christian Wolff, and others. Virginia Anderson edits the first published collection of these conversations. She pairs each interview with a contextual essay by a contemporary expert that shows how the composer's discussion with Childs fits into his life and work. Together, the interviewees cover a broad range of ideas and concerns around topics like education, notation, developments in electronic music, changing demands on performers, and tonal music. Innovative and revealing, Interviews with American Composers is an artistic and historical snapshot of American music at an important crossroads.
Download or read book Speculative Biography written by Donna Lee Brien and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While speculation has always been crucial to biography, it has often been neglected, denied or misunderstood. This edited collection brings together a group of international biographers to discuss how, and why, each uses speculation in their work; whether this is to conceptualise a project in its early stages, work with scanty or deliberately deceptive sources, or address issues associated with shy or stubborn subjects. After defining the role of speculation in biography, the volume offers a series of work-in-progress case studies that discuss the challenges biographers encounter and address in their work. In addition to defining the ‘speculative spectrum’ within the biographical endeavour, the collection offers a lexicon of new terms to describe different types of biographical speculation, and more deeply engage with the dynamic interplay between research, subjectivity and that which Natalie Zemon Davis dubbed ‘informed imagination’. By mapping the field of speculative biography, the collection demonstrates that speculation is not only innate to biographical practice but also key to rendering the complex mystery of biographical subjects, be they human, animal or even metaphysical.
Download or read book Christian Wolff written by Michael Hicks and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2012-09-15 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this first interpretive narrative of the life and work of Christian Wolff, Michael Hicks and Christian Asplund trace the influences and sensibilities of a contemporary composer's atypical career path and restless imagination. Written in full cooperation with Wolff, including access to his papers, this volume is a much-needed introduction to a leading avant-garde composer still living, writing music, and speaking about his own work. Wolff has pioneered various compositional and notational idioms, including overtly political music, indeterminacy, graphic scores, and extreme virtuosity. Trained as a classicist rather than a musician, Wolff has never quite had both feet in the rarefied world of contemporary composition. Yet he's considered a "composer's composer," with a mind ensconced equally in ancient Greek tragedy and experimental music and an eccentric and impulsive compositional approach that eludes a fixed stylistic fingerprint. Hicks and Asplund cover Wolff's family life and formative years, his role as a founder of the New York School of composers, and the context of his life and work as part of the John Cage circle, as well as his departures from it. Critically assessing Wolff's place within the experimental musical field, this volume captures both his eloquence and reticence and provides insights into his broad interests and activities within music and beyond.
Download or read book Imagination without Borders written by Laura Hein and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2020-06-01 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tomiyama Taeko, a Japanese visual artist born in 1921, is changing the way World War II is remembered in Japan, Asia, and the world. Her work deals with complicated moral and emotional issues of empire and war responsibility that cannot be summed up in simple slogans, which makes it compelling for more than just its considerable beauty. Japanese today are still grappling with the effects of World War II, and, largely because of the inconsistent and ambivalent actions of the government, they are widely seen as resistant to accepting responsibility for their nation’s violent actions against others during the decades of colonialism and war. Yet some individuals, such as Tomiyama, have produced nuanced and reflective commentaries on those experiences, and on the difficulty of disentangling herself from the priorities of the nation despite her lifelong political dissent. Tomiyama’s sophisticated visual commentary on Japan’s history—and on the global history in which Asia is embedded—provides a compelling guide through the difficult terrain of modern historical remembrance, in a distinctively Japanese voice.
Download or read book Cornelius Cardew 1936 1981 written by John Tilbury and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 1124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cornelius Cardew (1936-81) was a musician of genius for whom life and art were as one. He was a radical, both artistically and politically, becoming a tireless activist and uncompromising Marxist-Leninist. Passion and imagination governed all he did: his boldness and humanity continue to intrigue and inspire. The author, whose close friendship with Cardew dates from their first concert together, in January 1960, has worked for many years on this biography, and brings his subject vividly to life. In doing this, he has drawn extensively from Cardew's journals and letters, and obtained first-hand accounts from friends and colleagues. The handling of this material is thoughtful and meticulous. Tilbury is a master story-teller and this particular story is of epic scale and character. We begin in 1932, appropriately on May Day, with the first meeting of his parents. Later, we encounter the intrepid schoolboy and student, who impressed sufficiently at the Royal Academy of Music to receive funds to study in Cologne with Karlheinz Stockhausen. The narrative during this period is delightfully picaresque, a colorful prelude to the years of family responsibilities and extraordinary musical endeavor and achievement. As events unfold, discussion of the music is given due weight, but is never unduly weighty.
Download or read book After Wagner written by Mark Berry and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2014 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is both a telling of operatic histories 'after' Richard Wagner, and a philosophical reflection upon the writing of those histories. Historical musicology reckons with intellectual and cultural history, and vice versa. The 'after' of the title denotes chronology, but also harmony and antagonism within a Wagnerian tradition. Parsifal, in which Wagner attempted to go beyond his achievement in the Ring, to write 'after' himself, is followed by two apparent antipodes: the strenuously modernist Arnold Schoenberg and the stheticist Richard Strauss. Discussion of Strauss's Capriccio, partly in the light of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron, reveals a more 'political' work than either first acquaintance or the composer's 'intention' might suggest. Then come three composers from subsequent generations: Luigi Dallapiccola, Luigi Nono, and Hans Werner Henze. Geographical context is extended to take in Wagner's Italian successors; the problem of political emancipation in and through music drama takes another turn here, confronting challenges and opportunities in more avowedly 'politically engaged' art. A final section explores the world of staging opera, of so-called Regietheater, as initiated by Wagner himself. Stefan Herheim's celebrated Bayreuth production of Parsifal, and various performances of Lohengrin are discussed, before looking back to Mozart (Don Giovanni) and forward to Alban Berg's Lulu and Nono's Al gran sole carico d'amore. Throughout, the book invites us to consider how we might perceive the sthetic and political integrity of the operatic work 'after Wagner'. After Wagner will be invaluable to anyone interested in twentieth-century music drama and its intersection with politics and cultural history. It will also appeal to those interested in Richard Wagner's cultural impact on succeeding generations of composers. MARK BERRY is Senior Lecturer in Music at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Download or read book Global Pop written by Timothy D Taylor and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-08-13 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global Pop examines the rise of "world musics" and "world beat", and some of the musicians associated with these recent genres such as Peter Gabriel, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and Johnny Clegg. Drawing on a wide range of sources - academic, popular, cyber, interviews, and the music itself - Global Pop charts an accessible path through many of the issues and contradictions surrounding the contemporary movement of people and musics worldwide. Global Pop examines the range of discourses employed in and around world music, demonstrating how the central concept of authenticity is wielded by musicians, fans, and other listeners, and looks at some of these musics in detail, examining ways they are caught up in forms of domination and resistance. The book also explores how some cross-cultural collaborations may fashion new musics and identities through innovative combinations of sounds and styles.
Download or read book Metamorphosis in Music written by Benjamin R. Levy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-13 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the mid-1950s through the 1960s, Hungarian composer György Ligeti went through a remarkable period of stylistic transition, from the emulation of his fellow countryman Béla Bartók to his own individual style at the forefront of the Western-European avant-garde. Through careful study of the sketches and drafts, as well as analysis of the finished scores, Metamorphosis in Music takes a detailed look at this compositional evolution. Author Benjamin R. Levy includes sketch studies created through transcriptions and reproductions of archival material-much of which has never before been published-providing new, detailed information about Ligeti's creative process and compositional methods. The book examines all of Ligeti's compositions from 1956 to 1970, analyzing little-known and unpublished works in addition to recognized masterpieces such as Atmosphères, Aventures, the Requieim, and the Chamber Concerto. Discoveries from Ligeti's sketches, prose, and finished scores lead to an enriched appreciation of these already multifaceted works. Throughout the book, Levy interweaves sketch study with comments from interviews, counterbalancing the composer's own carefully crafted public narrative about his work, and revealing lingering attachments to older forms and insights into the creative process. Metamorphosis in Music is an essential treatment of a central figure of the musical midcentury, who found his place in a generation straddling the divide between the modern and post-modern eras.
Download or read book Louis Armstrong Duke Ellington and Miles Davis written by Aaron Lefkovitz and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-06-20 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Miles Davis as distinctively global symbols of threatening and nonthreatening black masculinity. It centers them in debates over U.S. cultural exceptionalism, noting how they have been part of the definition of jazz as a jingoistic and exclusively American form of popular culture.
Download or read book Music in the Late Twentieth Century written by Richard Taruskin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-08-14 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The universally acclaimed and award-winning Oxford History of Western Music is the eminent musicologist Richard Taruskin's provocative, erudite telling of the story of Western music from its earliest days to the present. Each book in this superlative five-volume set illuminates-through a representative sampling of masterworks-the themes, styles, and currents that give shape and direction to a significant period in the history of Western music. Music in the Late Twentieth Century is the final installment of the set, covering the years from the end of World War II to the present. In these pages, Taruskin illuminates the great compositions of recent times, offering insightful analyses of works by Aaron Copland, John Cage, Milton Babbitt, Benjamin Britten, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass, among many others. He also looks at the impact of electronic music and computers, the rise of pop music and rock 'n' roll, the advent of postmodernism, and the contemporary music of Laurie Anderson, John Zorn, and John Adams. Laced with brilliant observations, memorable musical analysis, and a panoramic sense of the interactions between history, culture, politics, art, literature, religion, and music, this book will be essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand this rich and diverse period.
Download or read book Noise as a Constructive Element in Music written by Mark Delaere and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-09-12 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Music and noise seem to be mutually exclusive. Music is generally considered as an ordered arrangement of sounds pleasing to the ear and noise as its opposite: chaotic, ugly, aggressive, sometimes even deafening. When presented in a musical context, noise can thus act as a tool to express resistance to predominant cultural values, to society or to socioeconomic structures (including those of the music industry). The oppositional stance confirms current notions of noise as something which is destructive, a belief not only cherished by hard-core rock bands but also shared by engineers and companies developing devices to suppress or reduce noise in our daily environment. In contrast to the common opinions on noise just described, this volume seeks to explore the constructive potential of noise in contemporary musical practices. Rather than viewing noise as a ‘defect’, this volume aims at studying its aesthetic and cultural potential. Within the noise music study field, most recent publications focus on subgenres such as psychedelic post-rock, industrial, hard-core punk, trash or rave, as they developed from rock and popular music. This book includes work on avant-garde music developed in the domain of classical music as well. In addition to already well-established (social) historical and aesthetical perspectives on noise and noise music, this volume offers contributions by music analysts.
Download or read book The New Music Theater written by Eric Salzman and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2008-11-06 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The New Music Theater is the first comprehensive attempt in English to cover a still-emerging art form in its widest range. This book, written for the reader who comes from the contemporary worlds of music, theater, film, literature, and visual arts, provides a wealth of examples and descriptions, not only of the works themselves but of the concepts, ideas and trends that have gone into the evolution of what may be the most central performance art form of the post-modern world."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Checklist of Writings on American Music 1640 1992 written by Guy A. Marco and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cumulative index to all three volumes of Literature of American Music in Books and Folk Music Collections.
Download or read book Concepts of Time in Post War European Music written by Aaron Hayes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-29 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concepts of Time in Post-War European Music gives a historical and philosophical account of the discussions of the nature of time and music during the mid-twentieth century. The nature of time was a persistent topic among composers in Paris and Darmstadt in the decades after World War II, one which influenced their musical practice and historical relevance. Based on the author’s specialized knowledge of the relevant philosophical discourses, this volume offers a balanced critique of these composers' attempts at philosophizing about time. Touching on familiar topics such as Adorno’s philosophy of music, the writings of Boulez and Stockhausen, and Messiaen’s theology, this volume uncovers specific relationships among varied intellectual traditions that have not previously been described. Each chapter provides a philosophical explanation of specific problems that are relevant for interpreting the composer’s own essays or lectures, followed by a musical analysis of a piece of music which illustrates central theoretical concepts. This is a valuable study for scholars and researchers of music theory, music history, and the philosophy of music.
Download or read book Stockhausen on Music written by Karlheinz Stockhausen and published by Marion Boyars. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Music.
