Philosophical Considerations on Contemporary Music

Description

The musical universe of the 20th and 21st centuries is a force-field in which styles, instruments, personalities and stories can be found that are ascribable to conceptual frameworks that may differ greatly one from another. Such complexity cannot be traced back to single theories or all-encompassing interpretations, but may be tackled, philosophically, starting from certain characteristics. This book identifies nine such characteristics: namely, Extremes, Noise, Silence, Technology, Audience, Listening, Freedom, Disintegration, and New Media. Each of these permits us to open up unforeseen philosophical-cultural paths and interpret, in its multifarious variety, the developments of contemporary music, profoundly interwoven with the history of thought, culture and society. Table of Contents Preface by Enrico Fubini Acknowledgements Introduction First Movement: History and Technics Chapter One 1. Modern, Post-modern or Contemporary? 2. From ‘Classical’ Modernity to the Second Modernity 3. The Electroacoustic Revolution and Musiques Actuelles 4. Extremes 4.1 Indeterminate versus Determinate Music 4.2 Dematerialisation versus Saturation 4.3 Seduction versus Rationality Chapter Two 1. Premise 2. Musical Ugliness? 3. Futurist Music 4. Musique Concrète 5. Glitch 6. Noise, Japanoise and Politico-aesthetic Resistance 6.1 Art, Aesthetics and Politics 6.2 Music and Politics 6.3 Japanoise Chapter Three 1. Sound-Silence 2. Poetic Function 3. Cobwebs of Sound Interwoven with Silence 4. Political Function Second Movement: Between Production and Reception Chapter Four 1. Aesthetics and the Problem of Technics 2. Art and the Problem of Technics 3. Music and the Problem of Technics Chapter Five 1. Emancipation and the Crisis of Compositional Individuality 2. Decline of Taste and the ‘Economisation’ of Art 3. Listening to Contemporary Music Chapter Six 1. Premise 2. Theodor W. Adorno and His Theory of Listening 3. What Is Left of Adorno? 4. Listening to Music and New Technologies 5. Ontological and Aesthetic Consequences of the Information-Technology Revolution Intermezzo Chapter Seven 1. Beyond the Freedom of Music 2. At the Origins of Jazz 3. Jazz and Civil Engagement 4. “Melodious Thunk” Third Movement: A Philosophical Reading Chapter Eight 1. Premise 2. Music and Information Theory 3. Structure and Entropy Chapter Nine 1. Premise 2. Composing Music and New Technologies 3. Technologisation of the Arts 4. Defining the Aesthetic Experience 5. Aesthetic Experience, Music and New Technologies 6. (Almost) Concluding Considerations Bibliography Index