Nils L. Wallin, Björn Merker, Steven Brown (eds.): The Origins of Music (1999)
Filed under book | Tags: · biology, biomusicology, cognition, ethnomusicology, evolution, language, linguistics, music, music history, music theory, neuroscience, sound recording
What biological and cognitive forces have shaped humankind’s musical behavior and the rich global repertoire of musical structures? What is music for, and why does every human culture have it? What are the universal features of music and musical behavior across cultures? In this groundbreaking book, musicologists, biologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, ethologists, and linguists come together for the first time to examine these and related issues. The book can be viewed as representing the birth of evolutionary biomusicology—the study of which will contribute greatly to our understanding of the evolutionary precursors of human music, the evolution of the hominid vocal tract, localization of brain function, the structure of acoustic-communication signals, symbolic gesture, emotional manipulation through sound, self-expression, creativity, the human affinity for the spiritual, and the human attachment to music itself.
Contributors: Simha Arom, Derek Bickerton, Steven Brown, Ellen Dissanayake, Dean Falk, David W. Frayer, Walter Freeman, Thomas Geissmann, Marc D. Hauser, Michel Imberty, Harry Jerison, Drago Kunej, François-Bernard Mâche, Peter Marler, Björn Merker, Geoffrey Miller, Jean Molino, Bruno Nettl, Chris Nicolay, Katharine Payne, Bruce Richman, Peter J. B. Slater, Peter Todd, Sandra Trehub, Ivan Turk, Maria Ujhelyi, Nils L. Wallin, Carol Whaling.
Publisher MIT Press, 2001
Bradford Books series
ISBN 0262731436, 9780262731430
512 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-8-3)
Comment (1)Iannis Xenakis: Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition (1963–) [French, English]
Filed under book | Tags: · mathematics, music, music history, music theory, philosophy of music, sound recording
In this landmark book Iannis Xenakis offers a critical self-examination of his theoretical propositions and artistic output of the thirty-five years of his career. It is an essential tool for understanding the man and the thought processes of one of this century’s most important and revolutionary musical figures.
Publisher Richard Masse, Paris, 1963
232 pages
English edition
First published by Indiana University Press, 1971.
Additional material compiled and edited by Sharon Kanach
Publisher Pendragon Press, Stuyvesant/NY, 1992
Contains translations of 6 chapters from the 1963 French edition, 3 chapters and 2 appendices added to the 1971 English edition, and another 4 chapters and 1 appendix added for this edition.
Volume 6 of Harmonologia series
ISBN 0945193246
387 pages
Publisher (EN)
Musiques formelles. Noveaux principes formels de composition musicale (French, 1963, 17 MB, added on 2012-2-17; updated on 2014-2-28), Chapter PDFs (at Iannis-Xenakis.org, added on 2014-11-11)
Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition (English, 1971/1992, no OCR; updated on 2012-8-3)
Joseph Auner: A Schoenberg Reader: Documents of a Life (2003)
Filed under book | Tags: · criticism, music, music history, music theory, performance
“Arnold Schoenberg’s close involvement with many of the principal developments of twentieth-century music, most importantly the break with tonality and the creation of twelve-tone composition, generated controversy from the time of his earliest works to the present day. This authoritative new collection of Schoenberg’s essays, letters, literary writings, musical sketches, paintings, and drawings offers fresh insights into the composer’s life, work, and thought.
The documents, many previously unpublished or untranslated, reveal the relationships between various aspects of Schoenberg’s activities in composition, music theory, criticism, painting, performance, and teaching. They also show the significance of events in his personal and family life, his evolving Jewish identity, his political concerns, and his close interactions with such figures as Gustav and Alma Mahler, Alban Berg, Wassily Kandinsky, and Thomas Mann. Extensive commentary by Joseph Auner places the documents and materials in context and traces important themes throughout Schoenberg’s career from turn-of-century Vienna to Weimar Berlin to nineteen-fifties Los Angeles.”
Publisher Yale University Press, 2003
ISBN 0300095406, 9780300095401
428 pages
PDF, PDF (updated on 2019-6-15)
Comment (1)