Tia DeNora: After Adorno: Rethinking Music Sociology (2003)

Theodor W. Adorno placed music at the centre of his critique of modernity and broached some of the most important questions about the role of music in contemporary society. One of his central arguments was that music, through the manner of its composition, affected consciousness and was a means of social management and control. His work was primarily theoretical however, and because these issues were never explored empirically his work has become sidelined in current music sociology. This book argues that music sociology can be greatly enriched by a return to Adorno’s concerns, in particular his focus on music as a dynamic medium of social life. Intended as a guide to ‘how to do music sociology’ this book deals with critical topics too often sidelined such as aesthetic ordering, cognition, the emotions and music as a management device and reworks Adorno’s focus through a series of grounded examples.

•Hands on guide to how to do music sociology • First book to explore Adorno’s work within context of empirical music sociology and reassess his legacy • Develops a new approach to music sociology drawing on current musicological and sociology concerns

Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2003
ISBN 052153724X, 9780521537247
176 pages

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PDF (updated on 2012-8-23)

Michael Nyman: Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, 2nd ed. (1974/1999)

“Michael Nyman’s book is a first-hand account of experimental music from 1950 to 1970. First published in 1974, it has remained the classic text on a significant form of music making and composing which developed alongside, and partly in opposition to, the post-war modernist tradition of composers such as Boulez, Berio, or Stockhausen. The experimentalist par excellence was John Cage whose legendary 4’ 33’’ consists of four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence to be performed on any instrument. Such pieces have a conceptual rather than purely musical starting point and radically challenge conventional notions of the musical work. Nyman’s book traces the revolutionary attitudes that were developed towards concepts of time, space, sound, and composer/performer responsibility. It was within the experimental tradition that the seeds of musical minimalism were sown and the book contains reference to the early works of Reich, Riley, Young, and Glass.”

Second edition
Foreword by Brian Eno
Publisher Cambridge University Press, 1999
ISBN 0521653835, 9780521653831
196 pages

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PDF (updated on 2012-11-4)

Leigh Landy: What’s the Matter with Today’s Experimental Music? Organized Sound Too Rarely Heard (1991)

What’s the Matter with Today’s Experimental Music? is based on the premise that contemporary music is suffering from a distinct lack of attention. It inspects and evaluates what is happening to musical experimentation, where things might have gone wrong and what can be done to resolve the problem. Intended as a supplement to surveys of music of the last forty years, it discusses not only the problems of musical content, but also problems of an extra-musical nature. Today’s education and communications media are seen to be the main cause of the anonymity of contemporary music and suggestions are made to improve this situation. Leigh Landy investigates audio-visual applications that have hardly been explored, new timbres and sound sources, the discovery of musical space, new notations, musical politics, and the ‘musical community’ in an attempt to incite more composers, musicians and musicologists to get this music out into the works and to stimulate the creation of new experimental works.

Publisher Routledge, 1991
ISBN 3718651688, 9783718651689
308 pages

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PDF (no OCR; some pages missing; updated on 2012-11-4)