Musical Vitalities

Musical Vitalities
Author: Holly Watkins
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2018-11-21
Genre: Music
ISBN: 022659484X

Does it make sense to refer to bird song—a complex vocalization, full of repetitive and transformative patterns that are carefully calculated to woo a mate—as art? What about a pack of wolves howling in unison or the cacophony made by an entire rain forest? Redefining music as “the art of possibly animate things,” Musical Vitalities charts a new path for music studies that blends musicological methods with perspectives drawn from the life sciences. In opposition to humanist approaches that insist on a separation between culture and nature—approaches that appear increasingly untenable in an era defined by human-generated climate change—Musical Vitalities treats music as one example of the cultural practices and biotic arts of the animal kingdom rather than as a phenomenon categorically distinct from nonhuman forms of sonic expression. The book challenges the human exceptionalism that has allowed musicologists to overlook music’s structural resemblances to the songs of nonhuman species, the intricacies of music’s physiological impact on listeners, and the many analogues between music’s formal processes and those of the dynamic natural world. Through close readings of Austro-German music and aesthetic writings that suggest wide-ranging analogies between music and nature, Musical Vitalities seeks to both rekindle the critical potential of nineteenth-century music and rejoin the humans at the center of the humanities with the nonhumans whose evolutionary endowments and planetary fates they share.

Musical Vitalities

Musical Vitalities
Author: Holly Watkins
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2018-11-21
Genre: Music
ISBN: 022659470X

Does it make sense to refer to bird song—a complex vocalization, full of repetitive and transformative patterns that are carefully calculated to woo a mate—as art? What about a pack of wolves howling in unison or the cacophony made by an entire rain forest? Redefining music as “the art of possibly animate things,” Musical Vitalities charts a new path for music studies that blends musicological methods with perspectives drawn from the life sciences. In opposition to humanist approaches that insist on a separation between culture and nature—approaches that appear increasingly untenable in an era defined by human-generated climate change—Musical Vitalities treats music as one example of the cultural practices and biotic arts of the animal kingdom rather than as a phenomenon categorically distinct from nonhuman forms of sonic expression. The book challenges the human exceptionalism that has allowed musicologists to overlook music’s structural resemblances to the songs of nonhuman species, the intricacies of music’s physiological impact on listeners, and the many analogues between music’s formal processes and those of the dynamic natural world. Through close readings of Austro-German music and aesthetic writings that suggest wide-ranging analogies between music and nature, Musical Vitalities seeks to both rekindle the critical potential of nineteenth-century music and rejoin the humans at the center of the humanities with the nonhumans whose evolutionary endowments and planetary fates they share.

Libba

Libba
Author: Laura Veirs
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Total Pages: 49
Release: 2018-01-16
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1452148589

Elizabeth Cotten was only a little girl when she picked up a guitar for the first time. It wasn't hers (it was her big brother's), and it wasn't strung right for her (she was left-handed). But she flipped that guitar upside down and backwards and taught herself how to play it anyway. By age eleven, she'd written "Freight Train," one of the most famous folk songs of the twentieth century. And by the end of her life, people everywhere—from the sunny beaches of California to the rolling hills of England—knew her music. This lyrical, loving picture book from popular singer-songwriter Laura Veirs and debut illustrator Tatyana Fazlalizadeh tells the story of the determined, gifted, daring Elizabeth Cotten—one of the most celebrated American folk musicians of all time.

Handbook of Musical Identities

Handbook of Musical Identities
Author: Raymond A. R. MacDonald
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 897
Release: 2017
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0199679487

The Handbook of Musical Identities explores three features of psychological approaches to musical identities and four real-life contexts in which musical identities have been investigated. The multidisciplinary breadth of the Handbook reflects the changes that are taking place in music, in digital technology, and in their role in society.

Body and Time

Body and Time
Author: Bianca Maria Pirani
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2014-10-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 144386868X

Body and Time is an innovative and concise survey of penetrating essays, conceptualizing the body as a physiological system embedded in a social network. In its complex and multilayered structure, it is aligned to and overlaps with other related functions. Contributors to this publication are members of the International Sociological Association Research Committee 54 – ‘The Body in the Social Sciences’, and their contributions specifically refer to the RC54 Mid-Term Conference – ‘The Mobile Interface and Social Change’, held at ‘Sapienza’, University of Rome, 6 December, 2012. What distinguishes the architecture of the book is that, collectively, it constitutes a challenge to the digital media paradigm in which the body is treated simply as a two dimensional icon of space and time; a relatively ‘free form’ with all kinds of narratives generated by the multimedia. Order in sequence should, indeed, be the key phrase incorporating four incisive problems dealt with in the thirteen chapters forming the ‘body’ of the book: identity, temporality, hierarchy and territoriality. In short, the volume demonstrates how fundamentally different ways of experiencing time are also determined by the differing cultural use of bodily rhythms – a ‘two-sided narration’ namely, of space and time. Central to the understanding of this interdependence is the study of interpersonal synchronization – increasing knowledge through the investigation of how rhythm, music, chants, dance, prayer and other harmonizing practices support social integration. This book will attract wide interest, especially from students, researchers and academics in the social sciences, neurosociology, digital studies and further afield.

Wherever the Sound Takes You

Wherever the Sound Takes You
Author: David Rowell
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2019-04-12
Genre: Music
ISBN: 022647755X

David Rowell is a professional journalist and an impassioned amateur musician. He’s spent decades behind a drum kit, pondering the musical relationship between equipment and emotion. In Wherever the Sound Takes You, he explores the essence of music’s meaning with a vast spectrum of players, trying to understand their connection to their chosen instrument, what they’ve put themselves through for their music, and what they feel when they play. This wide-ranging and openhearted book blossoms outward from there. Rowell visits clubs, concert halls, street corners, and open mics, traveling from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland to a death metal festival in Maryland, with stops along the way in the Swiss Alps and Appalachia. His keen reportorial eye treats us to in-depth portraits of musicians from platinum-selling legend Peter Frampton to a devout Christian who spends his days alone in a storage unit bashing away on one of the largest drum sets in the world. Rowell illuminates the feelings that both spur music’s creation and emerge from its performance, as well as the physical instruments that enables their expression. With an uncommon sensitivity and grace, he charts the pleasure and pain of musicians consumed with what they do—as all of us listen in.