Joanna Demers
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195387650
- eISBN:
- 9780199863594
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195387650.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, History, American
Electronic music since 1980 has splintered into numerous genres and subgenres, communities and subcultures. Given the differences separating academic, popular, and avant-garde electronic musicians, ...
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Electronic music since 1980 has splintered into numerous genres and subgenres, communities and subcultures. Given the differences separating academic, popular, and avant-garde electronic musicians, how can aesthetic theory account for this variety? And is there even a place for aesthetics in twenty-first-century culture? This book explores genres ranging from techno to electroacoustic music, from glitch to noise, and from dub to drones and maintains that culturally and historically informed aesthetic theory is not only possible but indispensable for understanding electronic music. The abilities of electronic music to use preexisting sounds and to create new sounds are widely known. The book proceeds from this starting point to consider how electronic music is changing the way we listen not only to music but to sound itself. The common trait among all variants of recent experimental electronic music is a concern with whether sound, in itself, bears meaning. The use in recent works of previously undesirable materials such as noise, field recordings, and extremely quiet sounds has contributed to electronic music’s destruction of the “musical frame,” the conventions that used to set music apart from the outside world. Different philosophies for listening have emerged in the wake of the musical frame’s disappearance. Some electronic-music genres insist on the inscrutability and abstraction of sound. Others maintain that sound functions as a sign pointing to concepts or places beyond the work. But all share an approach toward listening that departs fundamentally from the expectations governing music listening in the West for the past five centuries.Less
Electronic music since 1980 has splintered into numerous genres and subgenres, communities and subcultures. Given the differences separating academic, popular, and avant-garde electronic musicians, how can aesthetic theory account for this variety? And is there even a place for aesthetics in twenty-first-century culture? This book explores genres ranging from techno to electroacoustic music, from glitch to noise, and from dub to drones and maintains that culturally and historically informed aesthetic theory is not only possible but indispensable for understanding electronic music. The abilities of electronic music to use preexisting sounds and to create new sounds are widely known. The book proceeds from this starting point to consider how electronic music is changing the way we listen not only to music but to sound itself. The common trait among all variants of recent experimental electronic music is a concern with whether sound, in itself, bears meaning. The use in recent works of previously undesirable materials such as noise, field recordings, and extremely quiet sounds has contributed to electronic music’s destruction of the “musical frame,” the conventions that used to set music apart from the outside world. Different philosophies for listening have emerged in the wake of the musical frame’s disappearance. Some electronic-music genres insist on the inscrutability and abstraction of sound. Others maintain that sound functions as a sign pointing to concepts or places beyond the work. But all share an approach toward listening that departs fundamentally from the expectations governing music listening in the West for the past five centuries.
Jerrold Levinson
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199206179
- eISBN:
- 9780191709982
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199206179.003.0013
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This essay focuses on a particular musical phenomenon, namely, the distinctive and usually pleasurable chills, shivers, or frissons that listening to certain passages of music produce in many ...
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This essay focuses on a particular musical phenomenon, namely, the distinctive and usually pleasurable chills, shivers, or frissons that listening to certain passages of music produce in many listeners. This phenomenon is described and then situated in the field of musical pleasures as a whole, and the explanations of the phenomenon and its value that have been offered by cognitive psychologists are considered. A more satisfactory explanation is offered, one illustrated most fully in connection with a piano piece of Scriabin, his Etude in C# minor, op. 42, no. 5.Less
This essay focuses on a particular musical phenomenon, namely, the distinctive and usually pleasurable chills, shivers, or frissons that listening to certain passages of music produce in many listeners. This phenomenon is described and then situated in the field of musical pleasures as a whole, and the explanations of the phenomenon and its value that have been offered by cognitive psychologists are considered. A more satisfactory explanation is offered, one illustrated most fully in connection with a piano piece of Scriabin, his Etude in C# minor, op. 42, no. 5.
Eric F. Clarke
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195151947
- eISBN:
- 9780199870400
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195151947.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, Psychology of Music
This chapter starts by acknowledging that much of the discussion of music in the previous chapters has focused on music that has a strong and obvious link to materials outside music (texts, dramatic ...
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This chapter starts by acknowledging that much of the discussion of music in the previous chapters has focused on music that has a strong and obvious link to materials outside music (texts, dramatic or narrative context, ideological allegiances), and considers whether and how the ecological approach can shed light on the so-called absolute and autonomous music of the Western canon. After a brief discussion of the concepts of autonomy and heteronomy, the chapter moves to a discussion of autonomy and ecology, and from there to a discussion of different listening styles. A number of different characterizations of listening are presented, including two typologies — by Theodor Adorno and Pierre Schaeffer. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the specific character of autonomous music and the particular kind of consciousness that it can afford.Less
This chapter starts by acknowledging that much of the discussion of music in the previous chapters has focused on music that has a strong and obvious link to materials outside music (texts, dramatic or narrative context, ideological allegiances), and considers whether and how the ecological approach can shed light on the so-called absolute and autonomous music of the Western canon. After a brief discussion of the concepts of autonomy and heteronomy, the chapter moves to a discussion of autonomy and ecology, and from there to a discussion of different listening styles. A number of different characterizations of listening are presented, including two typologies — by Theodor Adorno and Pierre Schaeffer. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the specific character of autonomous music and the particular kind of consciousness that it can afford.
Maarten A. Hajer
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199281671
- eISBN:
- 9780191713132
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199281671.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, Comparative Politics
The decision what and how to rebuild at ‘Ground Zero’ is a highly symbolic and contentious act, with high financial stakes, in which the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Port Authority, ...
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The decision what and how to rebuild at ‘Ground Zero’ is a highly symbolic and contentious act, with high financial stakes, in which the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Port Authority, private stakeholders, mourning families, and inhabitants compete about the meaning of the site. Examining the stories of Ground Zero the chapter makes out four different discourses: (1) The Programme (2) Memorial Discourse, (3) Revitalization, and (4) Phoenix. The chapter studies the policy process focusing on two policy practices through which the meaning of rebuilding Ground Zero gets enacted in a particularly interesting way for the book. Listening to the city and the subsequent Design study constitute examples of opening up a closed process. The empirical analysis shows how new techniques of deliberation were employed, allowing many publics into the policy conversation. It also reveals interesting examples of how to recombine expertise and participation, and design experts cooperating with various audiences. However, by the lack of a creative follow-up, and a script that would have kept the public involved, the ‘rebuilding as a democracy’ in the end turns out to be an unhappy performative. In the end the oyster of classical-modernist politics that was forced open, closed again. A chance for an authoritative governance based on the story line of ‘we must rebuild as a democracy’ was missed.Less
The decision what and how to rebuild at ‘Ground Zero’ is a highly symbolic and contentious act, with high financial stakes, in which the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Port Authority, private stakeholders, mourning families, and inhabitants compete about the meaning of the site. Examining the stories of Ground Zero the chapter makes out four different discourses: (1) The Programme (2) Memorial Discourse, (3) Revitalization, and (4) Phoenix. The chapter studies the policy process focusing on two policy practices through which the meaning of rebuilding Ground Zero gets enacted in a particularly interesting way for the book. Listening to the city and the subsequent Design study constitute examples of opening up a closed process. The empirical analysis shows how new techniques of deliberation were employed, allowing many publics into the policy conversation. It also reveals interesting examples of how to recombine expertise and participation, and design experts cooperating with various audiences. However, by the lack of a creative follow-up, and a script that would have kept the public involved, the ‘rebuilding as a democracy’ in the end turns out to be an unhappy performative. In the end the oyster of classical-modernist politics that was forced open, closed again. A chance for an authoritative governance based on the story line of ‘we must rebuild as a democracy’ was missed.
Michele Friedner and Stefan Helmreich
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691164809
- eISBN:
- 9781400873869
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691164809.003.0013
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter examines “sound” and “hearing” in relation to silence and deafness. Sound studies and Deaf studies would seem, at first perception, to operate in worlds apart. Sound studies privileges ...
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This chapter examines “sound” and “hearing” in relation to silence and deafness. Sound studies and Deaf studies would seem, at first perception, to operate in worlds apart. Sound studies privileges attention to listening and hearing in cultural experience, whereas Deaf studies emphasizes the visual, particularly as a space of communicative practice. The chapter considers four major practices that might prompt scholars in sound studies and Deaf studies into conversation. These practices ask how sound is inferred in deaf and Deaf practice; how reimagining sound in the register of low-frequency vibration can upend deaf–hearing dichotomies; how “deaf futurists” champion cyborg sound; and how signing, non-speech-based communicative practices, and listening might unwind phonocentric models of speech and move analysis away from the simple frame of “speech communities.” The chapter concludes by asking how to move beyond the ear and eye, rethinking the subjects of sound and Deaf studies.Less
This chapter examines “sound” and “hearing” in relation to silence and deafness. Sound studies and Deaf studies would seem, at first perception, to operate in worlds apart. Sound studies privileges attention to listening and hearing in cultural experience, whereas Deaf studies emphasizes the visual, particularly as a space of communicative practice. The chapter considers four major practices that might prompt scholars in sound studies and Deaf studies into conversation. These practices ask how sound is inferred in deaf and Deaf practice; how reimagining sound in the register of low-frequency vibration can upend deaf–hearing dichotomies; how “deaf futurists” champion cyborg sound; and how signing, non-speech-based communicative practices, and listening might unwind phonocentric models of speech and move analysis away from the simple frame of “speech communities.” The chapter concludes by asking how to move beyond the ear and eye, rethinking the subjects of sound and Deaf studies.
Stefan Helmreich, Sophia Roosth, and Michele Friedner
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691164809
- eISBN:
- 9781400873869
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691164809.003.0014
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter examines auditory chimerism, an experimental technique in which sound recordings are decomposed and then reconstituted otherwise, often with the aim of testing the limits and ...
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This chapter examines auditory chimerism, an experimental technique in which sound recordings are decomposed and then reconstituted otherwise, often with the aim of testing the limits and possibilities of human hearing. Auditory chimeras are sound events realized through a technical practice of sieving one sound through another. The auditory chimera delivers a kind of structured nonsense meant to force listeners to confront their assumptions about how and what they are hearing when they hear. The chapter considers auditory chimerism through the work of the electronic composer Florian Hecker, who has experimented with this technique to produce against-the-grain redescriptions of sound. Its goal is to show how to think of bio-chimerical human hearing next to the technical process of making auditory chimeras, and what happens when chimeric listening meets chimeric composition.Less
This chapter examines auditory chimerism, an experimental technique in which sound recordings are decomposed and then reconstituted otherwise, often with the aim of testing the limits and possibilities of human hearing. Auditory chimeras are sound events realized through a technical practice of sieving one sound through another. The auditory chimera delivers a kind of structured nonsense meant to force listeners to confront their assumptions about how and what they are hearing when they hear. The chapter considers auditory chimerism through the work of the electronic composer Florian Hecker, who has experimented with this technique to produce against-the-grain redescriptions of sound. Its goal is to show how to think of bio-chimerical human hearing next to the technical process of making auditory chimeras, and what happens when chimeric listening meets chimeric composition.
Colin M. Brown and Peter Hagoort (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198507932
- eISBN:
- 9780191687242
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198507932.001.0001
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience
This book brings together experts on human language and the brain to present the first critical overview of the cognitive neuroscience of language, one of the fastest-moving areas today. In-depth ...
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This book brings together experts on human language and the brain to present the first critical overview of the cognitive neuroscience of language, one of the fastest-moving areas today. In-depth discussion of the representations and structures of language, as well as of the cognitive architectures which underlie speaking, listening, and reading, will provide a basis for future brain imaging research. In addition, the existing brain imaging literature on word and sentence processing is critically reviewed, as well as contributions from brain lesion data. Finally, the book discusses the prospects and problems of brain imaging techniques for the study of language, presents some of the most recent and promising analytic procedures for relating brain imaging data to the higher cognitive functions, and contains a review of the neuroanatomical structure of Broca's language area.Less
This book brings together experts on human language and the brain to present the first critical overview of the cognitive neuroscience of language, one of the fastest-moving areas today. In-depth discussion of the representations and structures of language, as well as of the cognitive architectures which underlie speaking, listening, and reading, will provide a basis for future brain imaging research. In addition, the existing brain imaging literature on word and sentence processing is critically reviewed, as well as contributions from brain lesion data. Finally, the book discusses the prospects and problems of brain imaging techniques for the study of language, presents some of the most recent and promising analytic procedures for relating brain imaging data to the higher cognitive functions, and contains a review of the neuroanatomical structure of Broca's language area.
Eric J. Cassell
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780195369052
- eISBN:
- 9780199979103
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195369052.001.0001
- Subject:
- Palliative Care, Patient Care and End-of-Life Decision Making
The healing tradition in Western medicine goes back to its Greek origins. What actually constitutes healing is poorly understood even in this first era of cure and advanced medical science. Sickness ...
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The healing tradition in Western medicine goes back to its Greek origins. What actually constitutes healing is poorly understood even in this first era of cure and advanced medical science. Sickness has usually been defined as the physical result of bodily disease. This is out of date in these times of chronic illness and when the problems of disability and aging are so common. This book uses a different definition: Persons are sick who cannot achieve their goals and purposes because of impairments of function from the molecular to the spiritual that they believe are in the province of medicine. Some impairment may be due to disease, but certainly not all. As the sick person has become the focus of medicine there have been repeated failed attempts to achieve both technologic and humanistic goals. This is wrong; there are not two goals there is only one ultimate goal, the well-being of the patient. All therapeutic interventions toward that end are exercises in healing. There are some impairments of function requiring high technology and others in which the personal actions of healers are most appropriate; proper balance is necessary. This book describes in depth what sickness is, what persons are, and how to understand function and its impairments. Healing skills and actions are explained and the nature of healing for sick and also suffering patients is detailed. The book concludes with a discussion of the moral basis of the patient-healer relationship and finally an understanding of goals.Less
The healing tradition in Western medicine goes back to its Greek origins. What actually constitutes healing is poorly understood even in this first era of cure and advanced medical science. Sickness has usually been defined as the physical result of bodily disease. This is out of date in these times of chronic illness and when the problems of disability and aging are so common. This book uses a different definition: Persons are sick who cannot achieve their goals and purposes because of impairments of function from the molecular to the spiritual that they believe are in the province of medicine. Some impairment may be due to disease, but certainly not all. As the sick person has become the focus of medicine there have been repeated failed attempts to achieve both technologic and humanistic goals. This is wrong; there are not two goals there is only one ultimate goal, the well-being of the patient. All therapeutic interventions toward that end are exercises in healing. There are some impairments of function requiring high technology and others in which the personal actions of healers are most appropriate; proper balance is necessary. This book describes in depth what sickness is, what persons are, and how to understand function and its impairments. Healing skills and actions are explained and the nature of healing for sick and also suffering patients is detailed. The book concludes with a discussion of the moral basis of the patient-healer relationship and finally an understanding of goals.
Eviatar Zerubavel
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195187175
- eISBN:
- 9780199943371
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195187175.003.0003
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
This chapter explores institutionalized prohibitions against looking, listening, and speaking that help keep certain matters off-limits. It is noted that what is seen, heard, and talked about is ...
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This chapter explores institutionalized prohibitions against looking, listening, and speaking that help keep certain matters off-limits. It is noted that what is seen, heard, and talked about is influenced by both normative and political pressures. The role of power in the social organization of attention and discourse is then addressed. Power enables people to control the amount of information that is conveyed to them. It also involves control over the bounds of acceptable discourse and involves the ability to redirect others' attention by “changing the subject.” Silencing is used “as a weapon of subjugation…the suffocation of the Other's voice.” Imposing secrecy need not involve any verbal exchange at all, as when a potential witness is promoted or given a raise in tacit exchange for his or her silence, or when a child molester simply closes the blinds or locks the door. Silencing is thus often done in utter silence.Less
This chapter explores institutionalized prohibitions against looking, listening, and speaking that help keep certain matters off-limits. It is noted that what is seen, heard, and talked about is influenced by both normative and political pressures. The role of power in the social organization of attention and discourse is then addressed. Power enables people to control the amount of information that is conveyed to them. It also involves control over the bounds of acceptable discourse and involves the ability to redirect others' attention by “changing the subject.” Silencing is used “as a weapon of subjugation…the suffocation of the Other's voice.” Imposing secrecy need not involve any verbal exchange at all, as when a potential witness is promoted or given a raise in tacit exchange for his or her silence, or when a child molester simply closes the blinds or locks the door. Silencing is thus often done in utter silence.
Thomas H. Troeger
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195398885
- eISBN:
- 9780199866236
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195398885.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
We are all by the very fact that we have beating hearts and vocal chords musical creatures. God has made each of us a woodwind and a drum. The chapter considers how in a culture where music is ...
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We are all by the very fact that we have beating hearts and vocal chords musical creatures. God has made each of us a woodwind and a drum. The chapter considers how in a culture where music is ubiquitous—in airports and stores, while using personal listening devices or waiting on the telephone—our capacity for attentive listening to the subtleties and beauties of music is diminished. There follows an introduction to basic methods of musicology that preachers can employ to create sermons based on serious works of music, both instrumental and choral, that reawaken a congregation’s capacity to listen in depth and to gain through their listening a sense of how the Spirit is praying for us in sighs too deep for words. There are illustrative sermons on the music of pipes, on works by J. S. Bach and Gabriel Fauré, and on the spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”Less
We are all by the very fact that we have beating hearts and vocal chords musical creatures. God has made each of us a woodwind and a drum. The chapter considers how in a culture where music is ubiquitous—in airports and stores, while using personal listening devices or waiting on the telephone—our capacity for attentive listening to the subtleties and beauties of music is diminished. There follows an introduction to basic methods of musicology that preachers can employ to create sermons based on serious works of music, both instrumental and choral, that reawaken a congregation’s capacity to listen in depth and to gain through their listening a sense of how the Spirit is praying for us in sighs too deep for words. There are illustrative sermons on the music of pipes, on works by J. S. Bach and Gabriel Fauré, and on the spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”
Joanna Demers
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195387650
- eISBN:
- 9780199863594
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195387650.003.0000
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, History, American
The introduction describes the aims and scope of the book, presents its methodology, and states its core argument. The book furnishes an aesthetic theory of several types of post-1980 electronic ...
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The introduction describes the aims and scope of the book, presents its methodology, and states its core argument. The book furnishes an aesthetic theory of several types of post-1980 electronic music, while acknowledging the controversial status of aesthetic theory in contemporary culture. Aesthetic theory can complement existing sociological and cultural histories of electronic music by providing a point of view from an interpretive subject who investigates affinities among musics that current scholarship usually keeps separate. The introduction then identifies these usually discrete styles as “metagenres” of institutional electroacoustic music, electronica, and sound art. The book’s methodology is to present individual works against a background of genre, the expectations that guide listening experience. The introduction concludes by presenting the thesis of the book: that recent electronic music encourages a fundamentally different form of listening experience called “aesthetic listening.”Less
The introduction describes the aims and scope of the book, presents its methodology, and states its core argument. The book furnishes an aesthetic theory of several types of post-1980 electronic music, while acknowledging the controversial status of aesthetic theory in contemporary culture. Aesthetic theory can complement existing sociological and cultural histories of electronic music by providing a point of view from an interpretive subject who investigates affinities among musics that current scholarship usually keeps separate. The introduction then identifies these usually discrete styles as “metagenres” of institutional electroacoustic music, electronica, and sound art. The book’s methodology is to present individual works against a background of genre, the expectations that guide listening experience. The introduction concludes by presenting the thesis of the book: that recent electronic music encourages a fundamentally different form of listening experience called “aesthetic listening.”
Joanna Demers
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195387650
- eISBN:
- 9780199863594
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195387650.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, History, American
Chapter 6 takes a step back to consider the three metagenres of institutional electroacoustic, electronica, and sound art. Participants in each metagenre describe their music in terms borrowing from ...
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Chapter 6 takes a step back to consider the three metagenres of institutional electroacoustic, electronica, and sound art. Participants in each metagenre describe their music in terms borrowing from the discourse of experimentalism, a discourse that pits a distinguished minority against a commercial mainstream and an indifferent public. Despite the fact that the three metagenres insist on their difference from one another, all three encourage a type of listening that resembles less what we think to be traditional musical listening (at least in Western art music) than a new type of attention, one this chapter dubs “aesthetic listening.”Less
Chapter 6 takes a step back to consider the three metagenres of institutional electroacoustic, electronica, and sound art. Participants in each metagenre describe their music in terms borrowing from the discourse of experimentalism, a discourse that pits a distinguished minority against a commercial mainstream and an indifferent public. Despite the fact that the three metagenres insist on their difference from one another, all three encourage a type of listening that resembles less what we think to be traditional musical listening (at least in Western art music) than a new type of attention, one this chapter dubs “aesthetic listening.”
Joanna Demers
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195387650
- eISBN:
- 9780199863594
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195387650.003.0007
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, History, American
Near the end of his life, Pierre Schaeffer gave an interview in which he described his attempt to develop a new musical language as a “failure.” Using Schaeffer’s dismal assessment of his life’s work ...
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Near the end of his life, Pierre Schaeffer gave an interview in which he described his attempt to develop a new musical language as a “failure.” Using Schaeffer’s dismal assessment of his life’s work as a point of departure, the conclusion considers the anxiety that experimental electronic music generates. The technical control that electronic instruments and applications afford is such that many electronic works behave nothing like conventional music. They may utterly avoid any trappings of melody, harmony, or predictable rhythm and may seem more similar to other media such as film or documentary. The conclusion argues that while its lack of musical parameters encourages a different type of listening experience, electronic music nonetheless cultivates an aesthetic awareness of sound, one anticipated in Theodor Adorno’s theory of “regressive listening.”Less
Near the end of his life, Pierre Schaeffer gave an interview in which he described his attempt to develop a new musical language as a “failure.” Using Schaeffer’s dismal assessment of his life’s work as a point of departure, the conclusion considers the anxiety that experimental electronic music generates. The technical control that electronic instruments and applications afford is such that many electronic works behave nothing like conventional music. They may utterly avoid any trappings of melody, harmony, or predictable rhythm and may seem more similar to other media such as film or documentary. The conclusion argues that while its lack of musical parameters encourages a different type of listening experience, electronic music nonetheless cultivates an aesthetic awareness of sound, one anticipated in Theodor Adorno’s theory of “regressive listening.”
Eric Clarke, Nicola Dibben, and Stephanie Pitts
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198525578
- eISBN:
- 9780191689352
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198525578.001.0001
- Subject:
- Psychology, Music Psychology
Music pervades everyday life. In so many ways, music marks and orchestrates the ways in which people experience the world together. What is it that makes people want to live their lives to the sound ...
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Music pervades everyday life. In so many ways, music marks and orchestrates the ways in which people experience the world together. What is it that makes people want to live their lives to the sound of music, and why do so many of our most private experiences and most public spectacles incorporate — or even depend on — music? This book uses psychology to understand musical behaviour and experience in a range of circumstances, including composing and performing, listening and persuading, and teaching and learning. Starting from ‘real world’ examples of musical experiences, it critically examines the ways in which psychology can explain people's diverse experience of, and engagement with music, focusing on how music is used, acquired, and made in a range of familiar musical contexts. Using a framework of real and imagined musical scenarios, the book draws on a wide range of research in the psychology of music and music education. The book is organized into three central sections. Firstly, it tackles the psychology of playing, improvising, and composing music, understood as closely related and integrated activities. Next, it addresses the ways in which people listen to music, manage their emotions, moods, and identities with music, and use music for therapy, persuasion, and social control. Finally, it considers music in human development, and in a range of more formal and informal educational contexts. The final chapter provides an overview of the history and preoccupations of music psychology as a discipline.Less
Music pervades everyday life. In so many ways, music marks and orchestrates the ways in which people experience the world together. What is it that makes people want to live their lives to the sound of music, and why do so many of our most private experiences and most public spectacles incorporate — or even depend on — music? This book uses psychology to understand musical behaviour and experience in a range of circumstances, including composing and performing, listening and persuading, and teaching and learning. Starting from ‘real world’ examples of musical experiences, it critically examines the ways in which psychology can explain people's diverse experience of, and engagement with music, focusing on how music is used, acquired, and made in a range of familiar musical contexts. Using a framework of real and imagined musical scenarios, the book draws on a wide range of research in the psychology of music and music education. The book is organized into three central sections. Firstly, it tackles the psychology of playing, improvising, and composing music, understood as closely related and integrated activities. Next, it addresses the ways in which people listen to music, manage their emotions, moods, and identities with music, and use music for therapy, persuasion, and social control. Finally, it considers music in human development, and in a range of more formal and informal educational contexts. The final chapter provides an overview of the history and preoccupations of music psychology as a discipline.
Roshanak Kheshti
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479867011
- eISBN:
- 9781479861125
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479867011.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Fearing the rapid disappearance of indigenous cultures, twentieth-century American ethnographers turned to the phonograph to salvage native languages and musical practices. Prominent among these ...
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Fearing the rapid disappearance of indigenous cultures, twentieth-century American ethnographers turned to the phonograph to salvage native languages and musical practices. Prominent among these early “songcatchers” were white women of comfortable class standing, similar to the female consumers targeted by the music industry as the gramophone became increasingly present in bourgeois homes. Through these simultaneous movements, listening became constructed as a feminized practice, one that craved exotic sounds and mythologized the ‘other’ that made the. In Modernity’s Ear, Roshanak Kheshti examines the ways in which racialized and gendered sounds became fetishized and, in turn, capitalized on by an emergent American world music industry through the promotion of an economy of desire. Taking a mixed-methods approach that draws on anthropology and sound studies, Kheshti locates sound as both representative and constitutive of culture and power. Through analyses of film, photography, recordings, and radio, as well as ethnographic fieldwork at a San Francisco-based world music record company, Kheshti politicizes the feminine in the contemporary world music industry. Deploying critical theory to read the fantasy of the feminized listener and feminized organ of the ear, Modernity’s Ear ultimately explores the importance of pleasure in constituting the listening self. The chapters in Modernity’s Ear are organized around the particular ways in which sound’s form is instrumentalized and utilized by the world music culture industry writ large to produce racialized and gendered encounters in the listening event. The familiar tropes deployed in the critical examination of world music—hybridity, appropriation, identity, authenticity, orality, and field recording—are upended in six chapters that reread these formations instead as miscegenation, incorporation, signifiance (loss of self), aurality, and refusal. This reorientation toward the embodied encounters and subjective outcomes staged by the WMCI enables a critical engagement with the utopian claims about music that motivate this very study.Less
Fearing the rapid disappearance of indigenous cultures, twentieth-century American ethnographers turned to the phonograph to salvage native languages and musical practices. Prominent among these early “songcatchers” were white women of comfortable class standing, similar to the female consumers targeted by the music industry as the gramophone became increasingly present in bourgeois homes. Through these simultaneous movements, listening became constructed as a feminized practice, one that craved exotic sounds and mythologized the ‘other’ that made the. In Modernity’s Ear, Roshanak Kheshti examines the ways in which racialized and gendered sounds became fetishized and, in turn, capitalized on by an emergent American world music industry through the promotion of an economy of desire. Taking a mixed-methods approach that draws on anthropology and sound studies, Kheshti locates sound as both representative and constitutive of culture and power. Through analyses of film, photography, recordings, and radio, as well as ethnographic fieldwork at a San Francisco-based world music record company, Kheshti politicizes the feminine in the contemporary world music industry. Deploying critical theory to read the fantasy of the feminized listener and feminized organ of the ear, Modernity’s Ear ultimately explores the importance of pleasure in constituting the listening self. The chapters in Modernity’s Ear are organized around the particular ways in which sound’s form is instrumentalized and utilized by the world music culture industry writ large to produce racialized and gendered encounters in the listening event. The familiar tropes deployed in the critical examination of world music—hybridity, appropriation, identity, authenticity, orality, and field recording—are upended in six chapters that reread these formations instead as miscegenation, incorporation, signifiance (loss of self), aurality, and refusal. This reorientation toward the embodied encounters and subjective outcomes staged by the WMCI enables a critical engagement with the utopian claims about music that motivate this very study.
Keith Beattie
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719078552
- eISBN:
- 9781781701836
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719078552.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Humphrey Jennings has been described as the only real poet of British cinema. His documentary films employ a range of representational approaches – including collagist narrative structures and ...
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Humphrey Jennings has been described as the only real poet of British cinema. His documentary films employ a range of representational approaches – including collagist narrative structures and dramatic re-enactment – in ways that transcend accepted notions of wartime propaganda and revise the strict codes of British documentary film of the 1930s and 1940s. The resultant body of work is a remarkable record of Britain at peace and war. This study examines a productive ambiguity of meanings associated with the subtle interaction of images and sounds within Jennings' films, and considers the ideological and institutional contexts and forces that impacted on the formal structure of his films. Central and lesser-known films are analysed, including Spare Time, Words for Battle, Listen to Britain, Fires Were Started, The Silent Village, A Diary for Timothy and Family Portrait. Poet, propagandist, surrealist and documentary filmmaker – Jennings' work embodies a mix of apprehension, personal expression and representational innovation. This book examines and explains the central components of Jennings' most significant films, and considers the relevance of his filmmaking to British cinema and contemporary experience.Less
Humphrey Jennings has been described as the only real poet of British cinema. His documentary films employ a range of representational approaches – including collagist narrative structures and dramatic re-enactment – in ways that transcend accepted notions of wartime propaganda and revise the strict codes of British documentary film of the 1930s and 1940s. The resultant body of work is a remarkable record of Britain at peace and war. This study examines a productive ambiguity of meanings associated with the subtle interaction of images and sounds within Jennings' films, and considers the ideological and institutional contexts and forces that impacted on the formal structure of his films. Central and lesser-known films are analysed, including Spare Time, Words for Battle, Listen to Britain, Fires Were Started, The Silent Village, A Diary for Timothy and Family Portrait. Poet, propagandist, surrealist and documentary filmmaker – Jennings' work embodies a mix of apprehension, personal expression and representational innovation. This book examines and explains the central components of Jennings' most significant films, and considers the relevance of his filmmaking to British cinema and contemporary experience.
Ceri Sullivan
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199547845
- eISBN:
- 9780191720901
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199547845.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This chapter studies the frequent use of images of dust or fragments as an attack on the foundation of judicious dialogue, mutual engagement. An effective response to enforced attention is flabby ...
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This chapter studies the frequent use of images of dust or fragments as an attack on the foundation of judicious dialogue, mutual engagement. An effective response to enforced attention is flabby uninterest. Poems break up those selves which should be focused on God. Both the image of distraction and its rhetorical formulation, aposiopesis (breaking off of speech), demonstrate that being lectured at results in a conscience which turns a deaf ear. This is neither acedia (torpor in devotion) nor melancholy, but boredom at an all-too-present divine. Although the fallen conscience acknowledges it goes to bits if not pulled together by God, it is irritated at the requirement to attend to him — even despite the numerous professional aids to listening the period boasts. Accordingly, a very aetiolated desire to hear God's words comes out repeatedly in a fretful comedy of weariness.Less
This chapter studies the frequent use of images of dust or fragments as an attack on the foundation of judicious dialogue, mutual engagement. An effective response to enforced attention is flabby uninterest. Poems break up those selves which should be focused on God. Both the image of distraction and its rhetorical formulation, aposiopesis (breaking off of speech), demonstrate that being lectured at results in a conscience which turns a deaf ear. This is neither acedia (torpor in devotion) nor melancholy, but boredom at an all-too-present divine. Although the fallen conscience acknowledges it goes to bits if not pulled together by God, it is irritated at the requirement to attend to him — even despite the numerous professional aids to listening the period boasts. Accordingly, a very aetiolated desire to hear God's words comes out repeatedly in a fretful comedy of weariness.
John G. Stackhouse
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195138078
- eISBN:
- 9780199834679
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195138074.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
As a form of Christian discourse, apologetical conversation ought to follow principles of communication patterned after the ministry of Jesus Christ. First, the apologist has to offer both verbal ...
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As a form of Christian discourse, apologetical conversation ought to follow principles of communication patterned after the ministry of Jesus Christ. First, the apologist has to offer both verbal proclamation (message) and living testimony (life) to his or her neighbor. Second, communication must always be full of both grace and truth, rather than emphasizing one at the expense of the other. Third, apologetics should be undertaken as an act of love both to God and to one's neighbor; all other purposes, whether to win the argument, try out new success tactics, and so on, must never compromise the love to God and neighbor as one's foremost concern. Fourth, keeping love to God and neighbor central means the apologist will always take an audience seriously on its own terms and seek out common ground between herself and her audience – which requires a cultivation of the art of listening.Less
As a form of Christian discourse, apologetical conversation ought to follow principles of communication patterned after the ministry of Jesus Christ. First, the apologist has to offer both verbal proclamation (message) and living testimony (life) to his or her neighbor. Second, communication must always be full of both grace and truth, rather than emphasizing one at the expense of the other. Third, apologetics should be undertaken as an act of love both to God and to one's neighbor; all other purposes, whether to win the argument, try out new success tactics, and so on, must never compromise the love to God and neighbor as one's foremost concern. Fourth, keeping love to God and neighbor central means the apologist will always take an audience seriously on its own terms and seek out common ground between herself and her audience – which requires a cultivation of the art of listening.
Marc Gopin
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195146509
- eISBN:
- 9780199834235
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195146506.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Abrahamic and cultural processes of change have been neglected by elite diplomacy and conflict resolution efforts in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict (although possibly only at a conscious level). ...
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Abrahamic and cultural processes of change have been neglected by elite diplomacy and conflict resolution efforts in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict (although possibly only at a conscious level). However, cultural and religious habits can be very helpful in peacemaking processes, and are expressed in two kinds of human engagements – informal and formal or ritualistic; such nonrational interactions are a necessary catalyst of rational negotiations. The power of symbol and metaphor is also a strong factor in interreligious encounters. This is investigated first by looking at the most elemental level of the encounter – the human face – and then at two other key ingredients of empathetic psychology – silence (listening) and humility. An examination is then made of symbolic and moral gestures, symbolic communication, and rituals. Numerous illustrative examples of these points are given from the author's experiences in Israel and Palestine.Less
Abrahamic and cultural processes of change have been neglected by elite diplomacy and conflict resolution efforts in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict (although possibly only at a conscious level). However, cultural and religious habits can be very helpful in peacemaking processes, and are expressed in two kinds of human engagements – informal and formal or ritualistic; such nonrational interactions are a necessary catalyst of rational negotiations. The power of symbol and metaphor is also a strong factor in interreligious encounters. This is investigated first by looking at the most elemental level of the encounter – the human face – and then at two other key ingredients of empathetic psychology – silence (listening) and humility. An examination is then made of symbolic and moral gestures, symbolic communication, and rituals. Numerous illustrative examples of these points are given from the author's experiences in Israel and Palestine.
John G. Stackhouse
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195138078
- eISBN:
- 9780199834679
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195138074.003.0010
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
Outlines a number of practical applications of the concern to be audience specific in one's apologetical conversation. The apologist ought to express both sympathy and modesty by listening to and ...
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Outlines a number of practical applications of the concern to be audience specific in one's apologetical conversation. The apologist ought to express both sympathy and modesty by listening to and understanding one's neighbor and only then offering the gospel as a gift, without demanding a particular response. The apologist also ought to treat the subject matter with the seriousness appropriate to it as well as undertake the difficult work of teaching the subject matter rather than just preaching it. The apologist will utilize both a minimalist approach (focusing on the main issues rather than getting lost among secondary particulars) and the maximalist approach (offering all she can that will interest her audience). Other important principles discussed are clarifying the most important questions; focusing on Jesus; reading the Bible; praying without ceasing; remembering process as well as crisis; worshiping God; and, finally, trying the side door – as chapter eleven illustrates.Less
Outlines a number of practical applications of the concern to be audience specific in one's apologetical conversation. The apologist ought to express both sympathy and modesty by listening to and understanding one's neighbor and only then offering the gospel as a gift, without demanding a particular response. The apologist also ought to treat the subject matter with the seriousness appropriate to it as well as undertake the difficult work of teaching the subject matter rather than just preaching it. The apologist will utilize both a minimalist approach (focusing on the main issues rather than getting lost among secondary particulars) and the maximalist approach (offering all she can that will interest her audience). Other important principles discussed are clarifying the most important questions; focusing on Jesus; reading the Bible; praying without ceasing; remembering process as well as crisis; worshiping God; and, finally, trying the side door – as chapter eleven illustrates.
