Jacques Attali: Noise: The Political Economy of Music (1977–) [FR, EN, ES, TR]

“Attali’s essential argument in Noise: The Political Economy of Music is that music, as a cultural form, is intimately tied up in the mode of production in any given society. For Marxist critics, this idea is nothing new. The novelty of Attali’s work is that it reverses the traditional understandings about how revolutions in the mode of production take place.

Attali believes that music has gone through four distinct cultural stages in its history: Sacrificing, Representing, Repeating, and a fourth cultural stage which could roughly be called Post-Repeating. These stages are each linked to a certain “mode of production”; that is to say, each of these stages carries with it a certain set of technologies for producing, recording and disseminating music, and also concomitant cultural structures that allow for music’s transmission and reception.”

French edition
Publisher PUF, Paris, 1977
301 pages

English edition
Translated by Brian Massumi
Foreword by Fredric Jameson
Afterword by Susan McClary
Publisher Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1985
Theory and History of Literature, Volume 16
ISBN 0719014719, 9780719014710
179 pages

Reviews: Edinburgh Review (1986), Dana Polan (SubStance, 1988), Ronald M. Radano (Ethnomusicology, 1989), Steven Shaviro (2005), notbored.org (n.d.), J. Szigeti (2014).
Outline: Theodore Gracyk.
Commentary: Eric Drott (Critical Inquiry, 2015).

Wikipedia

Bruits: essai sur l’economie politique de la musique (French, 1977, added on 2021-4-11)
Bruits: essai sur l’economie politique de la musique (French, new ed., 1977/2001, added on 2013-9-25, updated on 2021-4-11)
Noise: The Political Economy of Music (English, 1985, updated on 2012-7-24)
Ruidos: ensayos sobre economía política de la música (Spanish, trans. Ana María Palos, 1995, updated on 2021-4-11)
Gürültüden müziğe: müziğin ekonomi-politiği üzerine (Turkish, trans. Gülüş Gülcügil Türkmen, 2005/2014, EPUB, added on 2021-4-11)