Maximum Clarity And Other Writings On Music

Described by New York Times critic John Rockwell as “one of the best non-famous composers this country has to offer,” Ben Johnston reconceives familiar idioms--ranging from jazz to Southern hymns--using just intonation. Johnston studied with Darius Milhaud, Harry Partch, and John Cage, and is best known for his String Quartet No. 4, a complex series of variations on Amazing Grace. This volume reveals he is also a truly literate composer, who writes and speaks about music with eloquence and charm. “Maximum Clarity” and Other Writings on Music spans forty years and brings together forty-one of Johnston’s most important writings, including many rare and several previously unpublished selections. They include position papers, theoretical treatises, program notes, historical reflections, lectures, excerpts from interviews, and letters, and they cover a broad spectrum of concerns--from the technical exegesis of microtonality to the personal and the broadly humanistic. The volume concludes with a discography of all commercially available recordings of Johnston’s music.

In 1972-73, Barney Childs embarked on an ambitious attempt to survey the landscape of new American concert music. He recorded freewheeling conversations with fellow composers, most of them under forty, all of them important but most not yet famous. Though unable to publish the interviews in his lifetime, Childs had gathered invaluable dialogues with the likes of Robert Ashley, Olly Wilson, Harold Budd, Christian Wolff, and others. Virginia Anderson edits the first published collection of these conversations. She pairs each interview with a contextual essay by a contemporary expert that shows how the composer's discussion with Childs fits into his life and work. Together, the interviewees cover a broad range of ideas and concerns around topics like education, notation, developments in electronic music, changing demands on performers, and tonal music. Innovative and revealing, Interviews with American Composers is an artistic and historical snapshot of American music at an important crossroads.

The state of contemporary music is dizzyingly diverse in terms of style, media, traditions, and techniques. How have trends in music developed over the past decades? Music Composition in the 21st Century is a guide for composers and students that helps them navigate the often daunting complexity and abundance of resources and influences that confront them as they work to achieve a personal expression. From pop to classical, the book speaks to the creative ways that new composers mix and synthesize music, creating a music that exists along a more continuous spectrum rather than in a series of siloed practices. It pays special attention to a series of critical issues that have surfaced in recent years, including harmony, the influence of minimalism, the impact of technology, strategies of "openness," sound art, collaboration, and improvisation. Robert Carl identifies an emerging common practice that allows creators to make more informed aesthetic and technical decisions and also fosters an inherently positive approach to new methods.

Multidisciplinary analysis of experimentalism in music and the wider arts today Experimental Encounters in Music and Beyond opens a necessary dialogue on experimental practices in the arts and negotiates their place in contemporary society. Going beyond the music-historical usage of the term “experimental”, this book reimagines experimentation as an open working definition encompassing multiple forms of artistic attitudes and processes. The texts, images, and sounds offer multiple traces, faces, and spaces, revealing what experimentalism in music and the wider arts entails today. With perspectives from a range of disciplines—from choreography through composition to philosophy and beyond—the different experiences and artistic projects documented and discussed explore the complexity of experimentation in a way that is all the richer for being never-ending. Contributors Richard Barrett (Institute of Sonology, The Hague), Sebastian Berweck (pianist and performer), Kathleen Coessens (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Frederik Croene (pianist and composer, Belgium), Chaya Czernowin (Harvard University, Cambridge), Anne Douglas (Grays School of Art, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen), Bob Gilmore † (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Valentin Gloor (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), David Gorton (Royal Academy of Music, University of London), David Horne (Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester), Efva Lilja (Dansehallerne, Copenhagen), Svetlana Maraš (independent music professional, Radio Belgrade, Electronic Studio), Melinda Maxwell (Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester), Christopher Redgate (Royal Academy of Music, University of London), Jan C. Schacher (Royal Conservatoire, Artesis Plantijn University College, Antwerp, and Zurich University of the Arts), Reto Stadelmann (composer and musician, Germany), Steve Tromans (Middlesex University, UK), Penelope Turner (singer, musician, and performer, UK and Belgium)

"Tuning is the secret lens through which the history of music falls into focus," says Kyle Gann. Yet in Western circles, no other musical issue is so ignored, so taken for granted, so shoved into the corners of musical discourse. A classroom essential and an invaluable reference, The Arithmetic of Listening offers beginners the grounding in music theory necessary to find their own way into microtonality and the places it may take them. Moving from ancient Greece to the present, Kyle Gann delves into the infinite tunings available to any musician who feels straitjacketed by obedience to standardized Western European tuning. He introduces the concept of the harmonic series and demonstrates its relationship to equal-tempered and well-tempered tuning. He also explores recent experimental tuning models that exploit smaller intervals between pitches to create new sounds and harmonies. Systematic and accessible, The Arithmetic of Listening provides a much-needed primer for the wide range of tuning systems that have informed Western music. Audio examples demonstrating the musical ideas in The Arithmetic of Listening can be found at: https://www.kylegann.com/Arithmetic.html

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Mathematics and Computation in Music, MCM 2017, held in Mexico City, Mexico, in June 2017. The 26 full papers and 2 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 40 submissions. The papers feature research that combines mathematics or computation with music theory, music analysis, composition, and performance. They are organized in topical sections on algebraic models, computer assisted performance, Fourier analysis, Gesture Theory, Graph Theory and Combinatorics, Machine Learning, and Probability and Statistics in Musical Analysis and Composition.

During the 1960s and 70s some ethnomusicologists formed relationships with music-makers and ritual specialists in an attempt to interpret how they understood their musical actions. Subsequently ethnomusicologists have studied the respects in which explicit and implicit theory is involved in communication of musical knowledge. They have observed the production of music theory in institutions of modern nation-states and have sought out groups and individuals whose theorizing is not constrained by existing institutions. They are assessing the extent to which musical terminologies of diverse languages can be interpreted in relation to general concepts without imposing the assumptions and biases of one body of existing theory. That exercise is increasingly recognized as a necessary effort of decolonization. A thorough yet concise introduction to this field, Music Theory in Ethnomusicology outlines a conception of music theory suited to cross-cultural research on musical practices.

Now in paper for the first time, Bitter Music is a generous volume of writings by one of the twentieth century's great musical iconoclasts. Rejecting the equal temperament and concert traditions that have dominated western music, Harry Partch adopted the pure intervals of just intonation and devised a 43-tone-to-the-octave scale, which in turn forced him into inventing numerous musical instruments. His compositions realize his ideal of a corporeal music that unites music, dance, and theater. Winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, Bitter Music includes two journals kept by Partch, one while wandering the West Coast during the Depression and the other while hiking the rugged northern California coastline. It also includes essays and discussions by Partch of his own compositions, as well as librettos and scenarios for six major narrative/dramatic compositions.