Sean Alexander Gurd
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780823269655
- eISBN:
- 9780823271870
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823269655.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
An introduction to the major themes and concerns of Greek auditory art. The argument is that Greek song and drama was concerned with bringing the sensation of sound within the enclosure of ...
More
An introduction to the major themes and concerns of Greek auditory art. The argument is that Greek song and drama was concerned with bringing the sensation of sound within the enclosure of perception, at times against the categories central to Greek conceptions of culture. Greek auditory art’s engagement with sound is described as figure, as affect, and as melody.Less
An introduction to the major themes and concerns of Greek auditory art. The argument is that Greek song and drama was concerned with bringing the sensation of sound within the enclosure of perception, at times against the categories central to Greek conceptions of culture. Greek auditory art’s engagement with sound is described as figure, as affect, and as melody.
Sean Alexander Gurd
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780823269655
- eISBN:
- 9780823271870
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823269655.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
In the four centuries leading up to the death of Euripides in 406 BCE, Greek singers, poets, and theorists delved deep into auditory experience. They charted its capacity to develop topologies ...
More
In the four centuries leading up to the death of Euripides in 406 BCE, Greek singers, poets, and theorists delved deep into auditory experience. They charted its capacity to develop topologies distinct from those of the other senses; contemplated its use as a communicator of information; calculated its power to express and cause extreme emotion. They made sound too, artfully and self-consciously creating songs and poems that revelled in sonorousness. Dissonance is about these extraordinary experiments in auditory experience. In three chapters—on auditory figures, affect, and melody respectively—the book aims to show the many points of commonality between ancient Greek auditory art and the concerns of contemporary sound studies, avant-garde music, and aesthetics, making the argument that “classical” Greek song and drama was, in fact, an early European avant-garde, a proto-exploration of the aesthetics of noise. The book thus develops an alternative to that romantic ideal which sees antiquity as a frozen world, a world we can contemplate as though we were the enchanted speaker in Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” for whom the silent stillness of an ancient vase symbolizes the survival of truths more lasting than the generations of humankind.Less
In the four centuries leading up to the death of Euripides in 406 BCE, Greek singers, poets, and theorists delved deep into auditory experience. They charted its capacity to develop topologies distinct from those of the other senses; contemplated its use as a communicator of information; calculated its power to express and cause extreme emotion. They made sound too, artfully and self-consciously creating songs and poems that revelled in sonorousness. Dissonance is about these extraordinary experiments in auditory experience. In three chapters—on auditory figures, affect, and melody respectively—the book aims to show the many points of commonality between ancient Greek auditory art and the concerns of contemporary sound studies, avant-garde music, and aesthetics, making the argument that “classical” Greek song and drama was, in fact, an early European avant-garde, a proto-exploration of the aesthetics of noise. The book thus develops an alternative to that romantic ideal which sees antiquity as a frozen world, a world we can contemplate as though we were the enchanted speaker in Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” for whom the silent stillness of an ancient vase symbolizes the survival of truths more lasting than the generations of humankind.
James G. Mansell
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040672
- eISBN:
- 9780252099113
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040672.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
Early twentieth-century Britons thought that they were living in the “age of noise,” sensing the historical changes going on around them as a series of disturbing shifts in the sonic atmosphere. From ...
More
Early twentieth-century Britons thought that they were living in the “age of noise,” sensing the historical changes going on around them as a series of disturbing shifts in the sonic atmosphere. From motorcar engines and wireless loudspeakers to the terrifying interruptions of mechanized warfare, the feeling of living in topsy-turvy times arrived via the ear. Yet historians have not listened to the sounds of early twentieth-century Britain nor unravelled what it meant to live in an “age of noise”. This book turns a critical ear to the “ways of hearing” operating in Britain between 1914 and 1945 and argues that attempts to shape encounters with everyday sound were expressive of hopes and fears for modernity. Competing expert groups – doctors, psychologists, planners, mystics, even – thought differently about how best to attune the individual hearing self to the sounding social body in modernity. Examining noise abatement campaigns, scientific as well as enchanted interventions in the everyday sonic environment, and attempts to manage the auditory culture of total war, the book offers the first auditory history of modern Britain.Less
Early twentieth-century Britons thought that they were living in the “age of noise,” sensing the historical changes going on around them as a series of disturbing shifts in the sonic atmosphere. From motorcar engines and wireless loudspeakers to the terrifying interruptions of mechanized warfare, the feeling of living in topsy-turvy times arrived via the ear. Yet historians have not listened to the sounds of early twentieth-century Britain nor unravelled what it meant to live in an “age of noise”. This book turns a critical ear to the “ways of hearing” operating in Britain between 1914 and 1945 and argues that attempts to shape encounters with everyday sound were expressive of hopes and fears for modernity. Competing expert groups – doctors, psychologists, planners, mystics, even – thought differently about how best to attune the individual hearing self to the sounding social body in modernity. Examining noise abatement campaigns, scientific as well as enchanted interventions in the everyday sonic environment, and attempts to manage the auditory culture of total war, the book offers the first auditory history of modern Britain.
Carol Harrison
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199641437
- eISBN:
- 9780191755651
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199641437.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies, Theology
How did people think about listening in the ancient world, and what evidence do we have of it in practice? The Christian faith came to the illiterate majority in the early Church through their ears. ...
More
How did people think about listening in the ancient world, and what evidence do we have of it in practice? The Christian faith came to the illiterate majority in the early Church through their ears. This proved problematic: the senses and the body had long been held in suspicion as all too temporal, mutable, and distracting. This book argues that despite profound ambivalence on these matters, in practice, the senses, and in particular the sense of hearing, were ultimately regarded as necessary — indeed salvific — constraints for fallen human beings. By examining early catechesis, preaching, and prayer, it demonstrates that what illiterate early Christians heard both formed their minds and souls and, above all, enabled them to become ‘literate’ listeners; able not only to grasp the rule of faith but also tacitly to follow the infinite variations on it which were played out in early Christian teaching, exegesis, and worship. It will become clear that listening to the faith was less a matter of rationally appropriating facts and more an art which needed to be constantly practiced: for what was heard could not be definitively fixed and pinned down, but was ultimately the Word of the unknowable, transcendent God. This word demanded of early Christian listeners a response — to attend to its echoes, recollect and represent it, stretch out towards it source, and in the process, be transformed by it.Less
How did people think about listening in the ancient world, and what evidence do we have of it in practice? The Christian faith came to the illiterate majority in the early Church through their ears. This proved problematic: the senses and the body had long been held in suspicion as all too temporal, mutable, and distracting. This book argues that despite profound ambivalence on these matters, in practice, the senses, and in particular the sense of hearing, were ultimately regarded as necessary — indeed salvific — constraints for fallen human beings. By examining early catechesis, preaching, and prayer, it demonstrates that what illiterate early Christians heard both formed their minds and souls and, above all, enabled them to become ‘literate’ listeners; able not only to grasp the rule of faith but also tacitly to follow the infinite variations on it which were played out in early Christian teaching, exegesis, and worship. It will become clear that listening to the faith was less a matter of rationally appropriating facts and more an art which needed to be constantly practiced: for what was heard could not be definitively fixed and pinned down, but was ultimately the Word of the unknowable, transcendent God. This word demanded of early Christian listeners a response — to attend to its echoes, recollect and represent it, stretch out towards it source, and in the process, be transformed by it.
Sean Alexander Gurd
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780823269655
- eISBN:
- 9780823271870
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823269655.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
A conclusion and overview of Dissonance. Greek song and drama was concerned with bringing the sensation of sound within the enclosure of perception, at times against the categories central to Greek ...
More
A conclusion and overview of Dissonance. Greek song and drama was concerned with bringing the sensation of sound within the enclosure of perception, at times against the categories central to Greek conceptions of culture. Greek auditory art’s engagement with sound is described as figure, as affect, and as melody. These themes are illustrated through a reading of Euripides’ Bacchae.Less
A conclusion and overview of Dissonance. Greek song and drama was concerned with bringing the sensation of sound within the enclosure of perception, at times against the categories central to Greek conceptions of culture. Greek auditory art’s engagement with sound is described as figure, as affect, and as melody. These themes are illustrated through a reading of Euripides’ Bacchae.
Carol Harrison
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199641437
- eISBN:
- 9780191755651
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199641437.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies, Theology
This chapter examines early Christian auditory culture by first discussing the work of modern cultural anthropologists and then by using it as a frame discusses Greco–Roman attitudes to the senses ...
More
This chapter examines early Christian auditory culture by first discussing the work of modern cultural anthropologists and then by using it as a frame discusses Greco–Roman attitudes to the senses and sense perception. Christian attitudes are considered against this background and are shown to be double edged: the senses were understood both as a cause of the Fall and the means of salvation.Less
This chapter examines early Christian auditory culture by first discussing the work of modern cultural anthropologists and then by using it as a frame discusses Greco–Roman attitudes to the senses and sense perception. Christian attitudes are considered against this background and are shown to be double edged: the senses were understood both as a cause of the Fall and the means of salvation.
James Q. Davies and Ellen Lockhart
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226402079
- eISBN:
- 9780226402109
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226402109.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
The authors introduce the volume by critiquing Marxist-inflected notions of "aural culture," "auditory culture," or "sound culture." They insist upon the audiovisuality of both musical and scientific ...
More
The authors introduce the volume by critiquing Marxist-inflected notions of "aural culture," "auditory culture," or "sound culture." They insist upon the audiovisuality of both musical and scientific practice, stating their intention to explore overlooked confluences between the disciplines of music and science. "The differences between ‘optical’ and ‘auditory’ inquiry, between what counted as ‘musical performance’ and what counted as ‘scientific performance,'" they explain, "were often difficult to define." The authors continue by amassing evidence in support of the claim that institutional spaces for scientific inquiry were often indistinguishable from those for musical study. The city itself is configured in this description as a vast repository, a warehouse for the acquisition, exhibition, sale, and ordering of “research.” London is distanced from its reputation as the capital of das Land ohne Musik; the purview extends from Charles Burney’s General History of Music, a four-volume study of music “from the earliest ages to the present period” (completed in 1789) to the Great Exhibition of 1851, where musical instruments were assembled alongside the technologies of science and industry. The accumulated contents of these framing repositories set the stage for a new picture of modern disciplinarity belying the purported division of aural from visual knowledge.Less
The authors introduce the volume by critiquing Marxist-inflected notions of "aural culture," "auditory culture," or "sound culture." They insist upon the audiovisuality of both musical and scientific practice, stating their intention to explore overlooked confluences between the disciplines of music and science. "The differences between ‘optical’ and ‘auditory’ inquiry, between what counted as ‘musical performance’ and what counted as ‘scientific performance,'" they explain, "were often difficult to define." The authors continue by amassing evidence in support of the claim that institutional spaces for scientific inquiry were often indistinguishable from those for musical study. The city itself is configured in this description as a vast repository, a warehouse for the acquisition, exhibition, sale, and ordering of “research.” London is distanced from its reputation as the capital of das Land ohne Musik; the purview extends from Charles Burney’s General History of Music, a four-volume study of music “from the earliest ages to the present period” (completed in 1789) to the Great Exhibition of 1851, where musical instruments were assembled alongside the technologies of science and industry. The accumulated contents of these framing repositories set the stage for a new picture of modern disciplinarity belying the purported division of aural from visual knowledge.
Brian Kane
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- June 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199347841
- eISBN:
- 9780199347872
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199347841.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Philosophy of Music
Sound Unseen explores acousmatic sound—a sound that one hears without seeing its cause. Pierre Schaeffer, the inventor of musique concrète, in his Traité des objets musicaux, first popularized the ...
More
Sound Unseen explores acousmatic sound—a sound that one hears without seeing its cause. Pierre Schaeffer, the inventor of musique concrète, in his Traité des objets musicaux, first popularized the term “acousmatic.” After an introduction, chapter 1 provides a thorough exegesis of Schaeffer’s theory of acousmatics. It also presents three objections to Schaeffer’s theories (myth, phantasmagoria, and ontology) around which the book is structured. In part I, the origins of the word acousmatic are traced from Pythagoras to 18th- century France, and then to the present. After showing the mythic use of the term throughout history, a rationale is given for a better way to uncover the history of acousmatic sound. In part II, a sketch of the history of acousmatic sound in music is presented, focusing on the use of unseen sounds in 19th- century music aesthetics and concert practice. A theory of acousmatic technê is presented. Then, through a reading of Kafka’s tale “The Burrow,” a theory of the ontology of acousmatic sound is presented that focuses on the roles of “spacing” (espacement) and underdetermination. In part III, the theory is applied in two case studies: first, on the guitarist and inventor Les Paul; and second, on the role of the acousmatic voice in 20th-century philosophy, starting with Husserl and Heidegger, and ending with Mladen Dolar,The book concludes with some final thoughts about acousmatic sound, music studies, and sound studies.Less
Sound Unseen explores acousmatic sound—a sound that one hears without seeing its cause. Pierre Schaeffer, the inventor of musique concrète, in his Traité des objets musicaux, first popularized the term “acousmatic.” After an introduction, chapter 1 provides a thorough exegesis of Schaeffer’s theory of acousmatics. It also presents three objections to Schaeffer’s theories (myth, phantasmagoria, and ontology) around which the book is structured. In part I, the origins of the word acousmatic are traced from Pythagoras to 18th- century France, and then to the present. After showing the mythic use of the term throughout history, a rationale is given for a better way to uncover the history of acousmatic sound. In part II, a sketch of the history of acousmatic sound in music is presented, focusing on the use of unseen sounds in 19th- century music aesthetics and concert practice. A theory of acousmatic technê is presented. Then, through a reading of Kafka’s tale “The Burrow,” a theory of the ontology of acousmatic sound is presented that focuses on the roles of “spacing” (espacement) and underdetermination. In part III, the theory is applied in two case studies: first, on the guitarist and inventor Les Paul; and second, on the role of the acousmatic voice in 20th-century philosophy, starting with Husserl and Heidegger, and ending with Mladen Dolar,The book concludes with some final thoughts about acousmatic sound, music studies, and sound studies.
Gavin Williams (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190916749
- eISBN:
- 9780190916787
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190916749.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
This book addresses the sounds of the Crimean War, along with the many ways nineteenth-century wartime is aurally constructed. It examines wide-ranging experiences of listeners in Britain, France, ...
More
This book addresses the sounds of the Crimean War, along with the many ways nineteenth-century wartime is aurally constructed. It examines wide-ranging experiences of listeners in Britain, France, Turkey, Russia, Italy, Poland, Latvia, Daghestan, Chechnya, and Crimea, illustrating the close interplay between nineteenth-century geographies of empire and the modes by which wartime sound was archived and heard. This book covers topics including music in and around war zones, the mediation of wartime sound, the relationship between sound and violence, and the historiography of listening. Individual chapters concern sound in Leo Tolstoy’s wartime writings, and his place within cosmopolitan sensibilities; the role of the telegraph in constructing sonic imaginations in London and the Black Sea region; the absence of archives for the sounds of particular ethnic groups, and how songs preserve memories for both Crimean Tatars and Polish nationalists; the ways in which perceptions of voice rearranged the mental geographies of Baltic Russia, and undermined aspirations to national unity in Italy; Italian opera as a means of conditioning elite perceptions of Crimean battlefields; and historical frames through which to understand the diffusion of violent sounds amid everyday life. The volume engages the academic fields of musicology, ethnomusicology, history, literary studies, sound studies, and the history of the senses.Less
This book addresses the sounds of the Crimean War, along with the many ways nineteenth-century wartime is aurally constructed. It examines wide-ranging experiences of listeners in Britain, France, Turkey, Russia, Italy, Poland, Latvia, Daghestan, Chechnya, and Crimea, illustrating the close interplay between nineteenth-century geographies of empire and the modes by which wartime sound was archived and heard. This book covers topics including music in and around war zones, the mediation of wartime sound, the relationship between sound and violence, and the historiography of listening. Individual chapters concern sound in Leo Tolstoy’s wartime writings, and his place within cosmopolitan sensibilities; the role of the telegraph in constructing sonic imaginations in London and the Black Sea region; the absence of archives for the sounds of particular ethnic groups, and how songs preserve memories for both Crimean Tatars and Polish nationalists; the ways in which perceptions of voice rearranged the mental geographies of Baltic Russia, and undermined aspirations to national unity in Italy; Italian opera as a means of conditioning elite perceptions of Crimean battlefields; and historical frames through which to understand the diffusion of violent sounds amid everyday life. The volume engages the academic fields of musicology, ethnomusicology, history, literary studies, sound studies, and the history of the senses.
