Audio Culture, Revised Edition: Readings in Modern Music

812 Pages·2017·4.449 MB·English

by  Cox, Christoph(Editor);Warner, Daniel(Editor)

Audio Culture
Revised Edition

Contents
Acknowledgments
Sources and Permissions
Introduction to the Revised Edition
Part 1 Theories
I. Music and Its Others: Noise, Sound, Silence
Introduction
1 “Noise and Politics” Jacques Attali
2 “The Art of Noises: Futurist Manifesto” Luigi Russolo
3 “The Liberation of Sound” Edgard Varèse
4 “The Joys of Noise” Henry Cowell
5 “The Future of Music: Credo” John Cage
6 “The Music of the Environment” R. Murray Schafer
7 “The Gender of Sound” Anne Carson
8 “Queer Sound” Drew Daniel
9 “The Quiet of Blackness: Miles Davis and John Coltrane” Kevin
Quashie
II. Modes of Listening
Introduction
10 “Visual and Acoustic Space” Marshall McLuhan
11 “Acousmatics” Pierre Schaeffer
12 “Profound Listening and Environmental Sound Matter” Francisco
López
13 “Ambient Music” Brian Eno
14 “Auralizing the Sonosphere: A Vocabulary for Inner Sound and
Sounding” Pauline Oliveros
15 “Perceptual Geography: Third Ear Music and Structure Borne
Sound” Maryanne Amacher
16 “Hearing Essay” Evelyn Glennie
17 “The Aural Walk” Iain Chambers
18 “Ubiquitous Listening” Annahid Kassabian
19 “Forensic Listening” Lawrence Abu Hamdan
20 “Organizing the Silence” Ultra-red
III. Music in the Age of Electronic Reproduction
Introduction
21 “The Prospects of Recording” Glenn Gould
22 “The Studio as Compositional Tool” Brian Eno
23 “Bettered by the Borrower: The Ethics of Musical Debt” John
Oswald
24 “Plunderphonia” Chris Cutler
25 “Operating System for the Redesign of Sonic Reality” Kodwo Eshun
26 “Six File-Sharing Epiphanies” Kenneth Goldsmith
27 “Cultivating Activist Lives in Sound” Tara Rodgers
Part 2 Practices
IV. The Open Work
Introduction
28 “Poetics of the Open Work” Umberto Eco
29 “Composition as Process: Indeterminacy” John Cage
30 “Every Sound You Can Imagine: On Graphic Scores” Christoph
Cox
31 “Transformations and Developments of a Radical Aesthetic” Earle
Brown
32 “The Game Pieces” John Zorn
33 “Introduction to Catalog of Works” Anthony Braxton
34 “Notes on Conduction” Lawrence “Butch” Morris
V. Experimental Musics
Introduction
35 “Towards (a Definition of) Experimental Music” Michael Nyman
36 “Introduction to Themes & Variations” John Cage
37 “Generating and Organizing Variety in the Arts” Brian Eno
38 “Scratch Music Draft Constitution” Cornelius Cardew
39 “The Generation Game: Experimental Music and Digital
Culture” David Toop
40 “The New Discipline” Jennifer Walshe
41 “Re-Invent: Experimental Music in China” Yan Jun
VI. Improvised Musics
Introduction
42 “Change of the Century” Ornette Coleman
43 “Notes (8 Pieces): Creative Music” Wadada Leo Smith
44 “Free Improvisation” Derek Bailey
45 “Little Bangs: A Nihilist Theory of Improvisation” Frederic Rzewski
46 “Improvised Music After 1950: Afrological and Eurological
Perspectives” George E. Lewis
47 “Improvisation: Terms and Conditions” Vijay Iyer
48 “Going Fragile” Mattin
49 “27 Questions For a Start … And Some Answers to Begin
With” Trio Sowari et al.
VII. Minimalisms
Introduction
50 “Thankless Attempts at a Definition of Minimalism” Kyle Gann
51 “Basic Concepts of Minimal Music” Wim Mertens
52 “Music as a Gradual Process” Steve Reich
53 “Conversation with Richard Kostelanetz” La Monte Young and
Marian Zazeela
54 “LYssophobia: On Four Violins” Tony Conrad
55 “Rap, Minimalism and Structures of Time in Late Twentieth-Century
Culture” Susan McClary
56 “Draw a Straight Line and Follow It: Minimalism in Contemporary
Electronic Dance Music” Philip Sherburne
VIII. DJ Culture
Introduction
57 “Production–Reproduction: Potentialities of the Phonograph” László
Moholy-Nagy
58 “Détournement as Negation and Prelude” Situationist International
59 “The Invisible Generation” William S. Burroughs
60 “Algorithms: Erasures and the Art of Memory” Paul D. Miller
61 “Replicant: On Dub” David Toop
62 “Post-Rock” Simon Reynolds
63 “A Few Notes on Production and Playback” Marina Rosenfeld
IX. Electronic Music and Electronica
Introduction
64 “Introductory Remarks to a Program of Works Produced at the
Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center” Jacques Barzun
65 “Electronic and Instrumental Music” Karlheinz Stockhausen
66 “Stockhausen vs the Technocrats” Karlheinz Stockhausen et al.
67 “The Mysterious Power of the Infinitesimal” Eliane Radigue
68 “The Aesthetics of Failure: ‘Post-Digital’ Tendencies in
Contemporary Computer Music” Kim Cascone
69 “Laptop Intimacy and Platform Politics” Holly Herndon
Chronology
Selected Discography
Selected Bibliography
Glossary
Notes to Quotations
Index
Acknowledgements
A large network of people contributed to the publication of Audio Culture
in its two editions. The first edition was ably guided by Continuum’s
David Barker, who enthusiastically supported the project, the revised
edition by Bloomsbury’s Ally Jane Grossan, Michelle Chen, and Leah
Babb-Rosenfeld, whom we thank for their patience and generosity.
Gabriella Page-Fort superbly copyedited the manuscript and made helpful
suggestions and wise decisions. Thanks also to The Wire magazine’s Rob
Young, Tony Herrington, Chris Bohn, and Anne Hilde Neset. Aaron
Berman and Eva Rueschmann, Deans of Faculty at Hampshire College,
supported our work on the book with a series of faculty development
grants for which we are very grateful. A grant from Hampshire’s European
Studies Program, directed by Jim Miller, made possible the translation of
Pierre Schaeffer’s “Acousmatics.” Several students assisted with the
manuscript or suggested materials: Matt Krefting, Matthew Latkiewicz,
Daniel Lopatin, Julie Beth Napolin, Aaron Rosenblum, Charlotte
Schwennsen, John Shaw, Noel Kirsch, and Kira DeCoudres. Amherst
College music librarians Ann Maggs and Jane Beebe generously granted
us access to that library’s fine collections. Thanks, too, to a number of
friends and colleagues who helped us locate materials and track down
authors and artists: Robert Walser, David Rothenberg, Marta Ulvaeus,
Stephen Vitiello, Andrew Deutsch, Jon Abbey, Jonas Leddington, Oren
Ambarchi, Eddie Prévost, Keith Rowe, Jason Tors, and Eyal Hareuveni.
Discographical advice was generously offered by Michael Ehlers, Alan
Licht, Thurston Moore, Philip Sherburne, and Matt Krefting. Catherine
Dempsey put in hours of work comparing and correcting versions of Brian
Eno’s essays. John Zorn offered helpful criticisms and generously took the
time to talk with us about his work. Bill Dietz gave us access to
unpublished material in the Maryanne Amacher Archive. Special thanks to
Daniel W. Smith for his superb translation of Pierre Schaeffer’s text, and
to Holly Herndon, Kevin Quashie, Marina Rosenfeld, and Philip
Sherburne for contributing commissioned essays under tight deadlines.
Our warmest and deepest thanks go to Molly Whalen for her patience,
support, and enthusiasm, and to Mary Russo for her love, advice, and
encouragement. Finally, we express our sincere gratitude to the writers,
composers, and musicians who generously allowed us to reprint their
important work.