Alvin Lucier: Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music (2012)

“Composer and peformer Alvin Lucier brings clarity to the world of experimental music as he takes the reader through more than a hundred groundbreaking musical works, including those of Robert Ashley, John Cage, Charles Ives, Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, Christian Wolff, and La Monte Young. Lucier explains in detail how each piece is made, unlocking secrets of the composers’ style and technique. The book as a whole charts the progress of American experimental music from the 1950s to the present, covering such topics as indeterminacy, electronics, and minimalism, as well as radical innovations in music for the piano, string quartet, and opera. Clear, approachable and lively, Music 109 is Lucier’s indispensable guide to late 20th-century composition.”

With a Foreword by Robert Ashley
Publisher Wesleyan University Press, 2012
ISBN 0819572977, 9780819572974
236 pages
via Sorin

Reviews: Richard Kade (Leonardo, 2013), Dave Mandl (LA Review of Books, 2013), Michael Waugh (Popular Music, 2013).

Publisher

PDF, PDF (updated on 2017-11-25)
EPUB (added on 2017-11-25)

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 (7 MB, updated on 2024-11-2)

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

Iannis Xenakis: Music and Architecture: Architectural Projects, Texts, and Realizations (2008)

“This work fills a major lacuna in the literature by bringing together for the first time all of the projects, realizations and texts related to architecture by the multi-faceted Iannis Xenakis who worked with Le Corbusier for 12 years. Sharon Kanach assisted the composer in gathering the texts for this his last ambitious project.

The material in the book is presented under four main headings: “The Le Corbusier Years”, “Xenakis as Independent Architect”, “Writings on Architecture”, and “The Polytopes”. Three annexes include a commented bibliography of writings by and on Xenakis compiled by Makis Solomo, a critical index of Xenakis’s architecture by Sven Sterken, and a comparative chronology of Xenakis’s life and work by Sharon Kanach. The latter’s commentary throughout the book strives to bridge the reciprocal influences between music and architecture in the Xenakis oeuvre.”

Compiled, Translated and Commented by Sharon Kanach
Publisher Pendragon Press, Hillsdale/NY, 2008
The Iannis Xenakis Series, 1
ISBN 9781576471074
337 pages
via philip

Reviews: M.J. Grant (Music & Letters, 2010), James Harley (MusicWorks, 2010).

Publisher

PDF (84 MB, no OCR, updated on 2020-9-23)