Theorizing Music Evolution

Theorizing Music Evolution PDF Author: Miriam Piilonen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197695299
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
What did historical evolutionists such as Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer have to say about music? What role did music play in their evolutionary theories? What were the values and limits of these evolutionist turns of thought, and in what ways have they endured in present-day music research? Theorizing Music Evolution: Darwin, Spencer, and the Limits of the Human is a critical examination of ideas about musical origins, emphasizing nineteenth-century theories of music in the evolutionist writings of Darwin and Spencer. Author Miriam Piilonen argues for the significance of this Victorian music-evolutionism in light of its ties to a recently revitalized subfield of evolutionary musicology. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to music theorizing, Piilonen explores how historical thinkers constructed music in evolutionist terms and argues for an updated understanding of music as an especially fraught area of evolutionary thought. In this book, Piilonen delves into how historical evolutionists, in particular Darwin and Spencer, developed and applied a concept of music that served as a boundary-drawing device, used to trace or obscure the conceptual borders between human and animal. She takes as primary texts the early evolutionary treatises that double as theoretical accounts of music's origins. For Darwin, music served as a kind of proto-language common to humans and animals alike; he heard the songs of birds and the chirps of mice as musical, as articulated in texts such as The Descent of Man (1871) and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). Spencer, on the other hand, viewed music as a specifically human stage of evolutionary advance, beyond language acquisition, as outlined in his essay, "The Origin and Function of Music" (1857). These competing views established radically different perspectives on the origin and function of music in human cultural expression, while at the same time being mutually constitutive of one another. A ground-breaking contribution to music theory and histories of science, Theorizing Music Evolution turns to music evolution with an eye toward disrupting and intervening in these questions as they recur in the present.

Theorizing Music Evolution

Theorizing Music Evolution PDF Author: Miriam Piilonen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197695299
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 169

Get Book

Book Description
What did historical evolutionists such as Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer have to say about music? What role did music play in their evolutionary theories? What were the values and limits of these evolutionist turns of thought, and in what ways have they endured in present-day music research? Theorizing Music Evolution: Darwin, Spencer, and the Limits of the Human is a critical examination of ideas about musical origins, emphasizing nineteenth-century theories of music in the evolutionist writings of Darwin and Spencer. Author Miriam Piilonen argues for the significance of this Victorian music-evolutionism in light of its ties to a recently revitalized subfield of evolutionary musicology. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to music theorizing, Piilonen explores how historical thinkers constructed music in evolutionist terms and argues for an updated understanding of music as an especially fraught area of evolutionary thought. In this book, Piilonen delves into how historical evolutionists, in particular Darwin and Spencer, developed and applied a concept of music that served as a boundary-drawing device, used to trace or obscure the conceptual borders between human and animal. She takes as primary texts the early evolutionary treatises that double as theoretical accounts of music's origins. For Darwin, music served as a kind of proto-language common to humans and animals alike; he heard the songs of birds and the chirps of mice as musical, as articulated in texts such as The Descent of Man (1871) and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). Spencer, on the other hand, viewed music as a specifically human stage of evolutionary advance, beyond language acquisition, as outlined in his essay, "The Origin and Function of Music" (1857). These competing views established radically different perspectives on the origin and function of music in human cultural expression, while at the same time being mutually constitutive of one another. A ground-breaking contribution to music theory and histories of science, Theorizing Music Evolution turns to music evolution with an eye toward disrupting and intervening in these questions as they recur in the present.

Theorizing Music Evolution

Theorizing Music Evolution PDF Author: Miriam Piilonen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197695280
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 169

Get Book

Book Description
Theorizing Music Evolution is a critical examination of ideas about musical origins, with emphasis on nineteenth-century music-evolutionary texts by Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer. In a ground-breaking contribution to music theory and histories of science, author Miriam Piilonen argues for the significance of this Victorian music-evolutionism in lights of its ties to a recently revitalized subfield of evolutionary musicology.

Theorizing Music Videos of the Late 2010s

Theorizing Music Videos of the Late 2010s PDF Author: Leo Feisthauer
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3662650495
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
The work formulates a status quo of the music video medium in the late 2010s and shows which trends, aesthetics and (new) standards have established themselves. Particularly the role of the prosumer amidst evolved technical conditions is highlighted in this context, which strongly influences the evolution of music video in this period. Moreover, the author understands music videos as socio-political actors and examines the resulting questions of their interaction with culture.

Ethnomusicology: A Very Short Introduction

Ethnomusicology: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Timothy Rice
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199794375
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Explaining that musicality is an essential touchstone of the human experience, a concise introduction to the study of the nature of music, its community and its cultural values explains the diverse work of today's ethnomusicologists and how researchers apply anthropological and other social disciplines to studies of human and cultural behaviors. Original.

The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory

The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory PDF Author: Thomas Christensen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316025489
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 1033

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Book Description
The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory is the first comprehensive history of Western music theory to be published in the English language. A collaborative project by leading music theorists and historians, the volume traces the rich panorama of music-theoretical thought from the Ancient Greeks to the present day. Recognizing the variety and complexity of music theory as an historical subject, the volume has been organized within a flexible framework. Some chapters are defined chronologically within a restricted historical domain, whilst others are defined conceptually and span longer historical periods. Together the thirty-one chapters present a synthetic overview of the fascinating and complex subject that is historical music theory. Richly enhanced with illustrations, graphics, examples and cross-citations as well as being thoroughly indexed and supplemented by comprehensive bibliographies of the most important primary and secondary literature, this book will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars alike.

Style and Music

Style and Music PDF Author: Leonard B. Meyer
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226521527
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
Leonard Meyer proposes a theory of style and style change that relates the choices made by composers to the constraints of psychology, cultural context, and musical traditions. He explores why, out of the abundance of compositional possibilities, composers choose to replicate some patterns and neglect others. Meyer devotes the latter part of his book to a sketch-history of nineteenth-century music. He shows explicitly how the beliefs and attitudes of Romanticism influenced the choices of composers from Beethoven to Mahler and into our own time. "A monumental work. . . . Most authors concede the relation of music to its cultural milieu, but few have probed so deeply in demonstrating this interaction."—Choice "Probes the foundations of musical research precisely at the joints where theory and history fold into one another."—Kevin Korsyn, Journal of American Musicological Society "A remarkably rich and multifaceted, yet unified argument. . . . No one else could have brought off this immense project with anything like Meyer's command."—Robert P. Morgan, Music Perception "Anyone who attempts to deal with Romanticism in scholarly depth must bring to the task not only musical and historical expertise but unquenchable optimism. Because Leonard B. Meyer has those qualities in abundance, he has been able to offer fresh insight into the Romantic concept."—Donal Henahan, New York Times

Noise Music

Noise Music PDF Author: Paul Hegarty
Publisher: Continuum
ISBN: 9780826417275
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Noise/Music looks at the phenomenon of noise in music, from experimental music of the early 20th century to the Japanese noise music and glitch electronica of today. It situates different musics in their cultural and historical context, and analyses them in terms of cultural aesthetics. Paul Hegarty argues that noise is a judgement about sound, that what was noise can become acceptable as music, and that in many ways the idea of noise is similar to the idea of the avant-garde. While it provides an excellent historical overview, the book's main concern is in the noise music that has emerged since the mid 1970s, whether through industrial music, punk, free jazz, or the purer noise of someone like Merzbow. The book progresses seamlessly from discussions of John Cage, Erik Satie, and Pauline Oliveros through to bands like Throbbing Gristle and the Boredoms. Sharp and erudite, and underpinned throughout by the ideas of thinkers like Adorno and Deleuze, Noise/Music is the perfect primer for anyone interested in the louder side of experimental music.

A Bibliography of the History of Music Theory

A Bibliography of the History of Music Theory PDF Author: Gareth David Russell William
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Music theory
Languages : en
Pages : 53

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Book Description


The Event of Music History

The Event of Music History PDF Author: J. P. E. Harper-Scott
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783275995
Category : MUSIC
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Brings musicology to the cutting edge of debates in the postmodern philosophy of history.

Music in the Mirror

Music in the Mirror PDF Author: Andreas Giger
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803232198
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
In Music in the Mirror, thirteen distinguished scholars explore the concept of music, music theory, and music literature as mirror images of one another?whether real or distorted. Encompassing the history of music and music theory and literature from the Middle Ages to the present, these essays, in their reconsideration of the relationships among music, theory, and literature, offer new approaches and articulate compelling visions for future research.