Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music

Description

The groundbreaking Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (Continuum; September 2004; paperback original) maps the aural and discursive terrain of vanguard music today. Rather than offering a history of contemporary music, Audio Culture traces the genealogy of current musical practices and theoretical concerns, drawing lines of connection between recent musical production and earlier moments of sonic experimentation. It aims to foreground the various rewirings of musical composition and performance that have taken place in the past few decades and to provide a critical and theoretical language for this new audio culture. Via writings by philosophers, cultural theorists, and composers, Audio Culture explores the interconnections among such forms as minimalism, indeterminacy, musique concrète, free improvisation, experimental music, avant-rock, dub reggae, Ambient music, HipHop, and Techno. Instead of focusing on the putative "crossover" between "high art" and "popular culture," Audio Culture takes all of these musics as experimental practices on par with, and linked to, one another. While cultural studies has tended to look at music (primarily popular music) from a sociological perspective, the concern here is philosophical, musical, and historical. Audio Culture includes writing by some of the most important musical thinkers of the past half-century, among them John Cage, Brian Eno, Glenn Gould, Umberto Eco, Ornette Coleman, Jacques Attali, Simon Reynolds, Pauline Oliveros, Paul D. Miller, David Toop, John Zorn, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and many others. The book is divided into nine thematically-organized sections, each with its own introduction. Section headings include topics such as "Modes of Listening," "Minimalisms," and "DJ Culture." In addition, each essay has its own short introduction, helping the reader to place the essay within musical, historical, and conceptual contexts. The book concludes with a glossary, a timeline, and an extensive discography. Acknowledgments Sources and Permissions Introduction: Music and the New Audio Culture Part 1: Theories I. Music and Its Others: Noise, Sound, Silence Introduction 1. Jacques Attali, “Noise and Politics” 2. Luigi Russolo, “The Art of Noises: Futurist Manifesto” 3. Morton Feldman, “Sound, Noise, Varése, Boulez" 4. Edgard Varése, “The Liberation of Sound” 5. Henry Cowell, “The Joys of Noise” 6. John Cage, “The Future of Music: Credo” 7. R. Murray Schafer, “The Music of the Environment” 8. Mark Slouka, “Listening for Silence: Notes on the Aural Life” 9. Mary Russo and Daniel Warner, “Rough Music, Futurism, and Postpunk Industrial Noise Bands” 10. Simon Reynolds, “Noise” 11. “The Beauty of Noise: An Interview with Masami Akita of Merzbow” II. Modes of Listening Introduction 12. Marshall McLuhan, “Visual and Acoustic Space” 13. Hanns Eisler & Theodor Adorno, “The Politics of Hearing" 14. Pierre Schaeffer, “Acousmatics” 15. Francisco Lépez, “Profound Listening and Environmental Sound Matter” 16. Ola Stockfelt, “Adequate Modes of Listening” 17. Brian Eno, “Ambient Music” 18. Iain Chambers, “The Aural Walk” 19. Pauline Oliveros, “Some Sound Observations” 20. J.K. Randall, “Compose Yourself” III. Music in the Age of Electronic (Re)production Introduction 21. Glenn Gould, “The Prospects of Recording” 22. Brian Eno, “The Studio as Compositional Tool” 23. John Oswald, “Bettered by the Borrower: The Ethics of Musical Debt” 24. Chris Cutler, “Plunderphonia” 25. Kodwo Eshun, “Operating System for the Redesign of Sonic Reality” Part 2: Practices IV. The Open Work Introduction 26. Umberto Eco, “The Poetics of the Open Work” 27. John Cage, “Composition as Process: Indeterminacy” 28. Christoph Cox, “Visual Sounds: On Graphic Scores” 29. Earle Brown, “Transformations and Developments of a Radical Aesthetic” 30. John Zorn, “The Game Pieces” 31. Anthony Braxton, “Introduction to Catalog of Works" V. Experimental Musics Introduction 32. Michael Nyman, “Towards (a Definition of) Experimental Music” 33. John Cage, “Introduction to Themes & Variations” 34. Brian Eno, “Generating and Organizing Variety in the Arts” 35. Cornelius Cardew, “A Scratch Orchestra: Draft Constitution” 36. David Toop, “The Generation Game: Experimental Music and Digital Culture” VI. Improvised Musics Introduction 37. Ornette Coleman, “Change of the Century” 38. Derek Bailey, “Free Improvisation” 39. Frederic Rzewski, “Little Bangs: A Nihilist Theory of Improvisation” 40. George E. Lewis, “Improvised Music After 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives” VII. Minimalisms Introduction 41. Susan McClary, “Rap, Minimalism, and Structures of Time in Late Twentieth-Century Culture” 42. Kyle Gann, “Thankless Attempts at a Definition of Minimalism” 43. Steve Reich, “Music as a Gradual Process” 44. Wim Mertens, “Basic Concepts of Minimal Music” 45. Tony Conrad, “LYssophobia: On Four Violins” 46. Philip Sherburne, “Digital Discipline: Minimalism in House and Techno” VIII. DJ Culture Introduction 47. László Moholy-Nagy, “Production—Reproduction: Potentialities of the Phonograph” 48. William S. Burroughs, “The Invisible Generation” 49. Christian Marclay & Yasunao Tone, “Record, CD, Analog, Digital” 50. Paul D. Miller, “Algorithms: Erasures and the Art of Memory” 51. David Toop, “Replicant: On Dub” 52. Simon Reynolds, “Post-Rock” IX. Electronic Music and Electronica Introduction 53. Jacques Barzun, “Introductory Remarks to a Program of Works Produced at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center” 54. Karlheinz Stockhausen, “Electronic and Instrumental Music” 55. Karlheinz Stockhausen et al., “Stockhausen vs. the ‘Technocrats’” 56. Ben Neill, “Breakthrough Beats: Rhythm and the Aesthetics of Contemporary Electronic Music” 57. Kim Cascone, “The Aesthetics of Failure: ‘Post-Digital’ Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music” Chronology Glossary Selected Discography Selected Bibliography Notes for Quotations Index