Rethinking Music through Science and Technology Studies


Book Description

This volume seeks to offer a new approach to the study of music through the lens of recent works in science and technology studies (STS), which propose that facts are neither absolute truths, nor completely relative, but emerge from an intensely collective process of construction. Applied to the study of music, this approach enables us to reconcile the human, social, factual, and technological aspects of the musical world, and opens the prospect of new areas of inquiry in musicology and sound studies. Rethinking Music through Science and Technology Studies draws together a wide range of both leading and emerging scholars to offer a critical survey of STS applications to music studies, considering topics ranging from classical music instrument-making to the ethos of DIY in punk music. The book’s four sections focus on key areas of music study that are impacted by STS: organology, sound studies, music history, and epistemology. Raising crucial methodological and epistemological questions about the study of music, this book will be relevant to scholars studying the interactions between music, culture, and technology from many disciplinary perspectives.




Studies in Music with Text


Book Description

Throughout his career, David Lewin labored to make even the most abstract theory speak to the experience of the ordinary listener. This book combines many of Lewin's classic articles on song and opera with newly drafted chapters on songs of Brahms, Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, and Milton Babbitt. Bound together by Lewin's cogent insight, the resulting collection constitutes a major statement concerning the methodological problems associated with interpretation of texted music.




Made in Finland


Book Description

Made in Finland: Studies in Popular Music serves as a comprehensive and thorough introduction to the history, culture, and musicology of twentieth and twenty-first century popular music in Finland. The volume consists of essays by leading scholars in the field, and covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of popular music in Finland. Each essay provides adequate context so readers understand why the figure or genre under discussion is of lasting significance. The book is organized into five thematic sections: Emerging Foundations of Popular Music in Finland; Environments, Borderlines, Minorities; Transnationalisms; Sounds from the Underground; and Redefining Finnishness.




The Act of Musical Composition


Book Description

The study of musical composition has, in the main, been informed by anecdotal after-the-event accounts or post hoc analyses of composition. This book presents the first coherent exploration around this unique aspect of human creative activity. The central threads, or key themes - compositional process, creative thinking and problem-solving - are integrated by the combination of theoretical understandings of creativity with innovative empirical work.




Case Studies in Music Education


Book Description

This book is about making the journey as a music teacher, about the critical real-world problems and conflicts music teachers face that rarely seem to get any notice in college or graduate school music courses. How should a music teacher balance learning and performing? What is the best way to handle an angry parent? What are the consequences of the grades teachers assign? What are the best ways to discipline students? How should teachers relate to the administrators and to other teachers? What if the school is breaking copyright laws? These are just a few of the issues covered in this book. The emphasis here is not on the solution, but on the process. There are many viable approaches to nearly every obstacle, but before any meaningful long-term solutions can be made, teachers must identify their own personal philosophy of music education and recognize those traits that are admirable in another's style. This book is one that will engage you and help you become a more effective music teacher.




Performative Analysis


Book Description

This book proposes a new model for understanding the musical work, which includes interpretation -- both analysis- and performance-based -- as an integral component.




Hearing Luxe Pop


Book Description

"Hearing Luxe Pop explores a deluxe-production aesthetic that has long thrived in American popular music. John Howland presents an alternative music history that centers on shifts in timbre and sound through innovative uses of media, orchestration, and arranging. He travels from symphonic jazz to the Great American Songbook; teenage symphonies of the Motown label and 1960s girl groups to the emerging "countrypolitan" sound of Nashville; the sunshine pop and baroque pop of the Beach Boys to the blending of soul and funk into 1970s disco; the hip-hop-with-orchestra events of Jay-Z and Kanye West to indie rock bands with the Brooklyn Philharmonic. The luxe aesthetic merges popular-music idioms with lush string orchestrations, big-band instrumentation, and symphonic instruments. This book attunes readers to hearing the discourses that gathered around the music and its associated images, and in turn examines pop's relations to aspirational consumer culture, spectacle, theatricality, glamour, sophistication, cosmopolitanism, and "classy" lifestyles"--




Phrase and Subject


Book Description

The confluence between music and literature, long hymned as sister arts, is a newly burgeoning field of critical inquiry. This innovative collection of interdisciplinary essays provides a valuable introduction to the field, mapping the contours of recent research and investigating the mutual aesthetic influence of the two arts and their common historical ground. The examination of literary works using music as an analogy for literary composition and agent of cultural value, and the consideration of musical works whose structure is derived from literary models will excite the interest of both professional scholars and students in the fields of musicology, literary studies and modern European languages. (Legenda 2006) Delia da Sousa Correa is Lecturer in Literature at The Open University. She is the author of George Eliot, Music and Victorian Culture (2002) and editor of




Foundations in Music Psychology


Book Description

A state-of-the-art overview of the latest theory and research in music psychology, written by leaders in the field. This authoritative, landmark volume offers a comprehensive state-of-the-art overview of the latest theory and research in music perception and cognition. Eminent scholars from a range of disciplines, employing a variety of methodologies, describe important findings from core areas of the field, including music cognition, the neuroscience of music, musical performance, and music therapy. The book can be used as a textbook for courses in music cognition, auditory perception, science of music, psychology of music, philosophy of music, and music therapy, and as a reference for researchers, teachers, and musicians. The book's sections cover music perception; music cognition; music, neurobiology, and evolution; musical training, ability, and performance; and musical experience in everyday life. Chapters treat such topics as pitch, rhythm, and timbre; musical expectancy, musicality, musical disorders, and absolute pitch; brain processes involved in music perception, cross-species studies of music cognition, and music across cultures; improvisation, the assessment of musical ability, and singing; and music and emotions, musical preferences, and music therapy. Contributors Fleur Bouwer, Peter Cariani, Laura K. Cirelli, Annabel J. Cohen, Lola L. Cuddy, Shannon de L'Etoile, Jessica A. Grahn, David M. Greenberg, Bruno Gingras, Henkjan Honing, Lorna S. Jakobson, Ji Chul Kim, Stefan Koelsch, Edward W. Large, Miriam Lense, Daniel Levitin, Charles J. Limb, Psyche Loui, Stephen McAdams, Lucy M. McGarry, Malinda J. McPherson, Andrew J. Oxenham, Caroline Palmer, Aniruddh Patel, Eve-Marie Quintin, Peter Jason Rentfrow, Edward Roth, Frank A. Russo, Rebecca Scheurich, Kai Siedenburg, Avital Sternin, Yanan Sun, William F. Thompson, Renee Timmers, Mark Jude Tramo, Sandra E. Trehub, Michael W. Weiss, Marcel Zentner




Made in Germany


Book Description

Made in Germany: Studies in Popular Music serves as a comprehensive introduction to the history, sociology, and musicology of contemporary German popular music. Each essay, written by a leading scholar of German music, covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of pop music in Germany and provides adequate context so readers understand why the figure or genre under discussion is of lasting significance. The book first presents a general description of the history and background of popular music in Germany, followed by essays organized into thematic sections: Historical Spotlights; Globally German; Also "Made in Germany"; Explicitly German; and Reluctantly German.