Download or read book Universal Tonality written by Cisco Bradley and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-04 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since ascending onto the world stage in the 1990s as one of the premier bassists and composers of his generation, William Parker has perpetually toured around the world and released over forty albums as a leader. He is one of the most influential jazz artists alive today. In Universal Tonality historian and critic Cisco Bradley tells the story of Parker’s life and music. Drawing on interviews with Parker and his collaborators, Bradley traces Parker’s ancestral roots in West Africa via the Carolinas to his childhood in the South Bronx, and illustrates his rise from the 1970s jazz lofts and extended work with pianist Cecil Taylor to the present day. He outlines how Parker’s early influences—Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, and writers of the Black Arts Movement—grounded Parker’s aesthetic and musical practice in a commitment to community and the struggle for justice and freedom. Throughout, Bradley foregrounds Parker’s understanding of music, the role of the artist, and the relationship between art, politics, and social transformation. Intimate and capacious, Universal Tonality is the definitive work on Parker’s life and music.
Download or read book Tonality in Western Culture written by Richard Norton and published by Penn State University Press. This book was released on 1984 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book initiates "the first critical appraisal of the whole of Western tonal consciousness, from the discoveries of Pythagoras to the latest popular song." While tonality has been unwittingly championed as the product of the bourgeois age in Europe and America from 1600 to 1900, Norton states, key-centered music is understood here merely to exhibit components of an encompassing sonic expressivity as durable as any language. The author analyzes fundamental components of Western tonal phenomena that have persisted in music from ancient Jewish cantillation to the so-called atonal procedures of the Schoenberg school and beyond. Norton isolates the role of traditional music theory in the creation of models that attempted to explain tonality solely in terms of the concretized and limited objectivity of the musical score. The author evaluates and discards those features of logical positivism, scientific empiricism, idealism, and vitalism that in his view have encumbered virtually all speculation on tonality. With this negation, his aim is to restore the composer as a creator subject to his own sonic object. The book's approach is particularly indebted to the thought of Theodor Adorno, the member of the Frankfurt School of critical theorists that Norton finds most capable of suggesting an authentic dialectic of tonality. The author interprets the activities of both theorists and composers from various periods within the context of their mutual and conflicting historical interests. Ranging through the fields of physics, acoustics, psychology, sociology, economics, and historical musicology and criticism, Norton demonstrates that the cognitive abilities and disabilities of humans as tonal hearers form a necessary ground for understanding the remarkable vitality of tonality as historical process. Current theories of human tonal activity are hopelessly limited, the book concludes, however self-preserving they have become through the sanction of academic respectability. In short, tonal science, as it is commonly practiced, is not tonal truth. In its place the author urges a thoroughgoing critique of the language and methodology of contemporary tonal speculation, an abandonment of its confining sphere of interest, and a new and liberating approach to tonal consciousness that incorporates all relevant data of human sonic cognition. This approach assumes that tonality is not merely the result of the physical unfolding of natural appearance--the overtone series that so enchanted Rameau, Schenker, Hindemith, and others--and the submission of composers to its assumed authority. Tonality is, rather, Norton contends, a decision made against the chaos of pitch and for the human potential to create works of music that speak with integrity and beauty, that as aesthetic creations neither lag behind nor rush ahead of human enjoyment and understanding.
Download or read book Revolt of the Saints written by John F. Collins and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-01 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1985 the Pelourinho neighborhood in Salvador, Brazil was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Over the next decades, over 4,000 residents who failed to meet the state's definition of "proper Afro-Brazilianness" were expelled to make way for hotels, boutiques, NGOs, and other attractions. In Revolt of the Saints, John F. Collins explores the contested removal of the inhabitants of Brazil’s first capital and best-known site for Afro-Brazilian history, arguing that the neighborhood’s most recent reconstruction, begun in 1992 and supposedly intended to celebrate the Pelourinho's working-class citizens and their culture, revolves around gendered and racialized forms of making Brazil modern. He situates this focus on national origins and the commodification of residents' most intimate practices within a longer history of government and elite attempts to "improve" the citizenry’s racial stock even as these efforts take new form today. In this novel analysis of the overlaps of race, space, and history, Collins thus draws on state-citizen negotiations of everyday life to detail how residents’ responses to the attempt to market Afro-Brazilian culture and reimagine the nation’s foundations both illuminate and contribute to recent shifts in Brazil’s racial politics.
Download or read book Maroon Choreography written by fahima ife and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Maroon Choreography fahima ife speculates on the long (im)material, ecological, and aesthetic afterlives of black fugitivity. In three long-form poems and a lyrical essay, they examine black fugitivity as an ongoing phenomenon we know little about beyond what history tells us. As both poet and scholar, ife unsettles the history and idea of black fugitivity, troubling senses of historic knowing while moving inside the continuing afterlives of those people who disappeared themselves into rural spaces beyond the reach of slavery. At the same time, they interrogate how writing itself can be a fugitive practice and a means to find a way out of ongoing containment, indebtedness, surveillance, and ecological ruin. Offering a philosophical performance in black study, ife prompts us to consider how we—in our study, in our mutual refusal, in our belatedness, in our habitual assemblage—linger beside the unknown. Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award recipient
Download or read book The Unanswered Question written by Leonard Bernstein and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1976 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leonard Bernstein's Norton Lectures on the future course of music drew cheers from his Harvard audiences and television viewers. In the re-creation of his talks, the author considers music ranging from Hindu ragas through Mozart and Ravel to Copland, Shoenberg, and Stravinsky.
Download or read book Unseeing Empire written by Bakirathi Mani and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Unseeing Empire Bakirathi Mani examines how empire continues to haunt South Asian American visual cultures. Weaving close readings of fine art together with archival research and ethnographic fieldwork at museums and galleries across South Asia and North America, Mani outlines the visual and affective relationships between South Asian diasporic artists, their photographic work, and their viewers. She notes that the desire for South Asian Americans to see visual representations of themselves is rooted in the use of photography as a form of colonial documentation and surveillance. She examines fine art photography by South Asian diasporic artists who employ aesthetic strategies such as duplication and alteration that run counter to viewers' demands for greater visibility. These works fail to deliver on viewers' desires to see themselves, producing instead feelings of alienation, estrangement, and loss. These feelings, Mani contends, allow viewers to question their own visibility as South Asian Americans in U.S. public culture and to reflect on their desires to be represented.
Download or read book How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony and Why You Should Care written by Ross W. Duffin and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2008-10-17 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A fascinating and genuinely accessible guide....Educating, enjoyable, and delightfully unscary."—Classical Music What if Bach and Mozart heard richer, more dramatic chords than we hear in music today? What sonorities and moods have we lost in playing music in "equal temperament"—the equal division of the octave into twelve notes that has become our standard tuning method? Thanks to How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony, "we may soon be able to hear for ourselves what Beethoven really meant when he called B minor 'black'" (Wall Street Journal).In this "comprehensive plea for more variety in tuning methods" (Kirkus Reviews), Ross W. Duffin presents "a serious and well-argued case" (Goldberg Magazine) that "should make any contemporary musician think differently about tuning" (Saturday Guardian). Some images in the ebook are not displayed owing to permissions issues.
Download or read book Stories of Tonality in the Age of Fran ois Joseph F tis written by Thomas Christensen and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-05-27 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stories of Tonality in the Age of François-Joseph Fétis explores the concept of musical tonality through the writings of the Belgian musicologist François-Joseph Fétis (1784–1867), who was singularly responsible for theorizing and popularizing the term in the nineteenth century. Thomas Christensen weaves a rich story in which tonality emerges as a theoretical construct born of anxiety and alterity for Europeans during this time as they learned more about “other” musics and alternative tonal systems. Tonality became a central vortex in which French musicians thought—and argued—about a variety of musical repertoires, be they contemporary European musics of the stage, concert hall, or church, folk songs from the provinces, microtonal scale systems of Arabic and Indian music, or the medieval and Renaissance music whose notational traces were just beginning to be deciphered by scholars. Fétis’s influential writings offer insight into how tonality ingrained itself within nineteenth-century music discourse, and why it has continued to resonate with uncanny prescience throughout the musical upheavals of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Download or read book Challenge to Musical Tradition a New Concept of Tonality written by Adele T. Katz and published by Franklin Classics Trade Press. This book was released on 2018-11-10 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Download or read book The Development of Harmony in Scriabin s Works written by Peter Sabbagh and published by Universal-Publishers. This book was released on 2003 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the history of music there are seldom as rapid musical developments as we can find in Scriabin's works. In only 31 years Scriabin made a breathtaking development: in his early works he still uses a romantic tonal language, while his later works are far-reaching into the 20th century. Scriabin's development is gradual and consequent, each step can be derived from the preceding, thus connecting the music of the 19th and 20th centuries. He can be regarded as a key composer of his age.Harmony is the central factor in Scriabin's musical thinking. From harmony everything else is developed. It defines the form, also the melody and tone systems are developed from it.This book is concerned with the following basic issues: Which elements in Scriabin's harmony are new, and what has been derived from the tradition? Why is the development in Scriabin's works consequent, once started, why did it have to follow a certain course? Is there something elemental in Scriabin's way of thinking that pushes ahead this development?
Download or read book TONALITY IN MODERN MUSIC written by RUDOLPH. RETI and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale written by William A. Sethares and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-05 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tuning, Timbre, Spectrum, Scale focuses on perceptions of consonance and dissonance, and how these are dependent on timbre. This also relates to musical scale: certain timbres sound more consonant in some scales than others. Sensory consonance and the ability to measure it have important implications for the design of audio devices and for musical theory and analysis. Applications include methods of adapting sounds for arbitrary scales, ways to specify scales for nonharmonic sounds, and techniques of sound manipulation based on maximizing (or minimizing) consonance. Special consideration is given here to a new method of adaptive tuning that can automatically adjust the tuning of a piece based its timbral character so as to minimize dissonance. Audio examples illustrating the ideas presented are provided on an accompanying CD. This unique analysis of sound and scale will be of interest to physicists and engineers working in acoustics, as well as to musicians and psychologists.
Download or read book Psychology of Music written by Diana Deutsch and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 563 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Approx.542 pages
Download or read book From Music to Mathematics written by Gareth E. Roberts and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2016-02-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guided tour of the mathematical principles inherent in music. Taking a "music first" approach, Gareth E. Roberts's From Music to Mathematics will inspire students to learn important, interesting, and at times advanced mathematics. Ranging from a discussion of the geometric sequences and series found in the rhythmic structure of music to the phase-shifting techniques of composer Steve Reich, the musical concepts and examples in the book motivate a deeper study of mathematics. Comprehensive and clearly written, From Music to Mathematics is designed to appeal to readers without specialized knowledge of mathematics or music. Students are taught the relevant concepts from music theory (notation, scales, intervals, the circle of fifths, tonality, etc.), with the pertinent mathematics developed alongside the related musical topic. The mathematics advances in level of difficulty from calculating with fractions, to manipulating trigonometric formulas, to constructing group multiplication tables and proving a number is irrational. Topics discussed in the book include • Rhythm • Introductory music theory • The science of sound • Tuning and temperament • Symmetry in music • The Bartók controversy • Change ringing • Twelve-tone music • Mathematical modern music • The Hemachandra–Fibonacci numbers and the golden ratio • Magic squares • Phase shifting Featuring numerous musical excerpts, including several from jazz and popular music, each topic is presented in a clear and in-depth fashion. Sample problems are included as part of the exposition, with carefully written solutions provided to assist the reader. The book also contains more than 200 exercises designed to help develop students' analytical skills and reinforce the material in the text. From the first chapter through the last, readers eager to learn more about the connections between mathematics and music will find a comprehensive textbook designed to satisfy their natural curiosity.
Download or read book The Revolution Has Come written by Robyn C. Spencer and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-17 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Revolution Has Come Robyn C. Spencer traces the Black Panther Party's organizational evolution in Oakland, California, where hundreds of young people came to political awareness and journeyed to adulthood as members. Challenging the belief that the Panthers were a projection of the leadership, Spencer draws on interviews with rank-and-file members, FBI files, and archival materials to examine the impact the organization's internal politics and COINTELPRO's political repression had on its evolution and dissolution. She shows how the Panthers' members interpreted, implemented, and influenced party ideology and programs; initiated dialogues about gender politics; highlighted ambiguities in the Panthers' armed stance; and criticized organizational priorities. Spencer also centers gender politics and the experiences of women and their contributions to the Panthers and the Black Power movement as a whole. Providing a panoramic view of the party's organization over its sixteen-year history, The Revolution Has Come shows how the Black Panthers embodied Black Power through the party's international activism, interracial alliances, commitment to address state violence, and desire to foster self-determination in Oakland's black communities.
Download or read book Melody Harmony Tonality written by E. Eugene Helm and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where did the major scale come from? Why does most traditional non-Western music not share Western principles of harmony? What does the inner structure of a canon have to do with religious belief? Why, in historical terms, is J.S. Bach's music regarded as a perfect combination of melody and harmony? Why do clocks in church towers strike dominant-tonic-dominant-tonic? What do cathedrals have to do with monochords? Intended for amateurs and professionals, concert-goers and conductors, Helm offers in down-to-earth language an explanation of the foundations of our Western music heritage, deepening our understanding and the listening experience of it for all.
Download or read book Hollywood Harmony written by Frank Lehman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Film music often tells us how to feel, but it also guides us how to hear. Filmgoing is an intensely musical experience, one in which the soundtrack structures our interpretations and steers our emotions. Hollywood Harmony explores the inner workings of film music, bringing together tools from music theory, musicology, and music psychology in this first ever book-length analytical study of this culturally central repertoire. Harmony, and especially chromaticism, is emblematic of the "film music sound," and it is often used to evoke that most cinematic of feelings-wonder. To help parse this familiar but complex musical style, Hollywood Harmony offers a first-of-its kind introduction to neo-Riemannian theory, a recently developed and versatile method of understanding music as a dynamic and transformational process, rather than a series of inert notes on a page. This application of neo-Riemannian theory to film music is perfect way in for curious newcomers, while also constituting significant scholarly contribution to the larger discipline of music theory. Author Frank Lehman draws from his extensive knowledge of cinematic history with case-studies that range from classics of Golden Age Hollywood to massive contemporary franchises to obscure cult-films. Special emphasis is placed on scores for major blockbusters such as Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Inception. With over a hundred meticulously transcribed music examples and more than two hundred individual movies discussed, Hollywood Harmony will fascinate any fan of film and music.
