Tony Gibbs: The Fundamentals of Sonic Art & Sound Design (2007)
Filed under book | Tags: · music, recording, sound art, sound design, sound recording
The Fundamentals of Sonic Art & Sound Design introduces a subject that will be new to many: sonic arts. The application of sound to other media (such as film or video) is well known, and the idea of sound as a medium in its own right is also widely accepted. However, the idea that sound could also be a distinct art form by itself is less well established and often misunderstood.
The Fundamentals of Sonic Arts & Sound Design introduces, describes and begins the process of defining this new subject and provides a starting point for anyone who has an interest in the creative uses of sound.
The book explores the worlds of sonic arts and sound design through their history and development, and looks at the present state of these extraordinarily diverse genres through the works and words of established artists. It discusses the wide range of practices that currently come under the heading of ‘sonic art’, as well as the technologies that are used and the impact that they have upon the work.
* Introduces students to the diverse disciplines of sonic art and sound design, examining the relevant technologies and approaches to recording, performance and display.
* Describes the history and development of sonic art as a distinct subject.
* Supported by a variety of examples, quotations and interviews with artists, as well as student resources, suggested reading and listening.
Publisher AVA Publishing, 2007
Fundamentals (Ava) Series / AVA academia
ISBN 2940373493, 9782940373499
175 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-8-3)
Comment (1)Paul Griffiths: The Substance of Things Heard. Writings about Music (2005)
Filed under book | Tags: · criticism, music, music history, sound recording
Paul Griffiths offers his own personal selection of some of his most substantial and imaginative articles and concert reviews from over three decades of indefatigable concertgoing around the world. He reports on premieres and other important performancesof works by such composers as Elliott Carter, Sofia Gubaidulina, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Steve Reich, as well as Harrison Birtwistle and other important British figures.
Griffiths vividly conveys the vision, aura, and idiosyncrasies of prominent pianists, singers, and conductors (such as Herbert von Karajan), and debates changing styles of performing Monteverdi and Purcell. A particular delight is his response to the world of opera, including Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande (sting productions), Pavarotti and Domingo in Verdi at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Schoenberg’s Moses and Aaron, and two wildly different Jonathan Miller versions of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
From the author’s preface: “We cannot say what music is. Yet we are verbal creatures, and strive with words to cast a net around it, knowing most of this immaterial stuff will evade capture. The stories that follow cover a wide range of events over a period of great change. Yet the net’s aim was always the same, to catch the substance of things heard.
“Criticism has to work largely by analogy and metaphor. This is no limitation. It is largely through such verbal ties that music is linked to other sorts of experience, not least the naturalworld and the orchestra of our feelings.”
Publisher University of Rochester Press, 2005
Volume 31 of Eastman studies in music
ISBN 1580462065, 9781580462068
378 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-8-3)
Comment (0)Robert Adlington (ed.): Sound Commitments: Avant-garde Music and the Sixties (2009)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1960s, aesthetics, avant-garde, electronic music, fluxus, music, music history, sound recording
The role of popular music is widely recognized in giving voice to radical political views, the plight of the oppressed, and the desire for social change. Avant-garde music, by contrast, is often thought to prioritize the pursuit of new technical or conceptual territory over issues of human and social concern. Yet throughout the activist 1960s, many avant-garde musicians were convinced that aesthetic experiment and social progressiveness made natural bedfellows. Intensely involved in the era’s social and political upheavals, they often sought to reflect this engagement in their music. Yet how could avant-garde musicians make a meaningful contribution to social change if their music remained the preserve of a tiny, initiated clique? In answer, Sound Commitments, examines the encounter of avant-garde music and “the Sixties” across a range of genres, aesthetic positions and geographical locations. Through music for the concert hall, tape and electronic music, jazz and improvisation, participatory “events,” performance art, and experimental popular music, the essays in this volume explore developments in the United States, France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, Japan and parts of the “Third World,” delving into the deep richness of avant-garde musicians’ response to the decade’s defining cultural shifts.
Featuring new archival research and/or interviews with significant figures of the period in each chapter, Sound Commitments will appeal to researchers and advanced students in the fields of post-war music, cultures of the 1960s, and the avant-garde, as well as to an informed general readership.
The book
* Explores the rich and complex encounter between avant-garde music and the cultural upheavals of the 1960s
* Draws on new archival research and/or interviews with significant figures of the period
* Explores the relevance of avant-garde music to implementing social change
Publisher Oxford University Press US, 2009
ISBN 019533664X, 9780195336641
292 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-8-3)
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