Paul Hillier: Arvo Pärt (1997)

“The music of the Estonian-born composer Arvo Pärt (1935) is a unique and powerful voice in the contemporary world. Using a tonal idiom based on a mixture of scales and triads, Pärt created a style that he calls `tintinnabuli’. Listening to it, one is reminded of the passionate and tranquility of some Russian icon, or of certain memorable scenes in the films of Andrei Tarkovsky.

In this book, the first full-length study of Pärt, Paul Hillier explores the tintinnabuli works in considerable depth. He also examines the music of Pärt’s earlier, somewhat neglected serial period, and charts the composer’s steady evolution towards the `abstract tonality’ of his later years.

In addition, a biographical chapter and discussion of topics such as Russian Orthodox spirituality, minimalism, and the influence of early music, combine to make this a substantial introduction to Pärt’s music. Hillier also draws on his own experience of working with the composer to offer thoughts on various performance issues.”

Publisher Oxford University Press, 1997
Oxford Studies of Composers series
ISBN 0198165501, 9780198165507
219 pages

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (no OCR, 78 MB)

See also 1-hour documentary, Who is Arvo Pärt? (A Journey into the Mind of a Composer), directed by Dorian Supin (1990).

Igor Stravinsky: Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons (1942–) [English, Spanish]

Cover of 1956 edition

This book collects Stravinsky’s lectures written together with Alexis Roland-Manuel and Pierre Souvtchinsky and presented at Harvard University in 1939-40. Providing a wide-ranging account of Stravinsky’s music theory it discusses such subjects as Wagnerism, the operas of Verdi, musical taste, musical snobbery, the influence of political ideas on Russian music under the Soviets, musical improvisation as opposed to musical construction, the nature of melody, and the function of the critic of music.

First published in French as Poétique musicale, 1942

English edition
Translated by Arthur Knodel and Ingolf Dahl
With a Preface by Darius Milhaud
Publisher Harvard University Press, Cambridge/MA, 1947
OCLC 155726113
142 pages

Poetics of Music (English, trans. Arthur Knodel and Ingolf Dahl, 1947, 6 MB)
Poética musical (Spanish, trans. Eduardo Grau, 1952)

Pierre Schaeffer: In Search of a Concrete Music (1952/2012)

“Pierre Schaeffer’s In Search of a Concrete Music has long been considered a classic text in electroacoustic music and sound recording. Now Schaeffer’s pioneering work—at once a journal of his experiments in sound composition and a treatise on the raison d’être of “concrete music”—is available for the first time in English translation. Schaeffer’s theories have had a profound influence on composers working with technology. However, they extend beyond the confines of the studio and are applicable to many areas of contemporary musical thought, such as defining an ‘instrument’ and classifying sounds. Schaeffer has also become increasingly relevant to DJs and hip-hop producers as well as sound-based media artists. This unique book is essential for anyone interested in contemporary musicology or media history.”

First published as À la recherche d’une musique concrète, Seuil, Paris, 1952.

Translated by Christine North and John Dack
Publisher University of California Press, 2012
ISBN 0520265742, 9780520265745
225 pages

Reviews: Daniela Cascella (Los Angeles Review of Books, 2013), Brian Kane (Organised Sound, 2013), Warren Burt (SoundBytes, 2014).

Publisher

PDF, PDF (7 MB, updated to an OCR’d version via Marcell Mars)

More from Schaeffer on Monoskop wiki (writings), UbuWeb (recordings), and Artsonores (films).