Music And Technology In The Twentieth Century

Braun (Universitat der Bundeswehr) presents 13 contributions by scholars in two fields of history--musicology and technology. Topics include the role of Yamaha in Japan's musical development, the social construction of the synthesizer, the player piano as a precursor of computer music, the musical role of airplanes and locomotives, the origins of the 45-RPM record, violin vibrato and the phonograph, Jimi Hendrix, the aesthetic challenge of sound sampling, and others. Originally published in 2000 as I Sing the Body Electric: Music and Technology in the 20th Century. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Ton de Leeuw was a truly groundbreaking composer. As evidenced by his pioneering study of compositional methods that melded Eastern traditional music with Western musical theory, he had a profound understanding of the complex and often divisive history of twentieth-century music. Now his renowned chronicle Music of the Twentieth Century is offered here in a newly revised English-language edition. Music of the Twentieth Century goes beyond a historical survey with its lucid and impassioned discussion of the elements, structures, compositional principles, and terminologies of twentieth-century music. De Leeuw draws on his experience as a composer, teacher, and music scholar of non-European music traditions, including Indian, Indonesian, and Japanese music, to examine how musical innovations that developed during the twentieth century transformed musical theory, composition, and scholarly thought around the globe.

A cultural history of MIDI (the Musical Instrument Digital Interface), one of the most revolutionary and transformative technologies in the history of music. A history of electronic music that goes way beyond the Moog. Part rigorous history, part insightful commentary, and part memoir, Mad Skills tells the story behind MIDI, aka the Musical Instrument Digital Interface, through the twentieth century's kaleidoscopic lens. Guiding us across one hundred years of musical instruments, and the music made with them, Mad Skills recounts the technical and creative innovations that led to the making of the most vital, long-standing, ubiquitous, and yet invisible music technology of our time.

Listening to instruments -- "The joy of precision" : mechanical instruments and the aesthetics of automation -- "The alchemy of tone" : Jörg Mager and electric music -- "Sonic handwriting" : media instruments and musical inscription -- "A new, perfect musical instrument" : the trautonium and electric music in the 1930s -- The expanding instrumentarium

Addressing how technology and creativity interrelate in the arts and culture of the late 20th century, this anthology combines a general introduction with a set of case studies from a range of international critics.

This book examines the modalities of human relationships and technology as reflected in the musical thinking of the authors of art music of the 20th and early 21st centuries. The discursive and reference frame of the treatise consists mainly of individual artistic poetics and more general musical-aesthetic reflections embedded in the basic theoretical concepts of technology and its functions in culture and society. The departure point for the work is Heidegger's lecture "Die Frage nach Technik", in which he suggests humanising technology through art. The book chapters examine the relationships between man, music, and technology from three points of view. Chapter 3 deals with music from a technical point of view, chapter 4 analyses the transformation of the musical artefact in the developmental arch of the 20th century from numerical abstraction through digitisation to materialisation in musical as well as non-musical art forms. Chapter 5 is a representation of man and his thinking in relation to technology in music. Here we distinguish between four basic types of attitudes in musical thinking on technology, categorised by the degree of influence attributed to technology: techno-utopian/techno-optimistic, techno-realistic, techno-sceptic, and post-technological. In the latter, we define four basic artistic strategies forming separate types: critical attitude, adaptation of technological models, recycling, and inspiration. These strategies are ranked from generally negative attitudes through specifically positive to generally positive.

This book has been written to assist researchers of the origin of how sound technology has changed dramatically in the first part of the twentieth Century. It deals with the technology of the growth of production and transmission of music specifically and then way in which music has been used for information and relaxation as well as the ambience in which it is consumed. It also deals with many of the formats in which the sound technology, is listen to and produced for instruction and consumption of this technology. The usage of specific and different formats for individual, small group, large group, national and international consumption for enjoyment and information in formal and informal use.

It is undeniable that technology has made a tangible impact on the nature of musical listening. The new media have changed our relationship with music in a myriad of ways, not least because the experience of listening can now be prolonged at will and repeated at any time and in any space. Moreover, among the more striking social phenomena ushered in by the technological revolution, one cannot fail to mention music’s current status as a commodity and popular music’s unprecedented global reach. In response to these new social and perceptual conditions, the act of listening has diversified into a wide range of patterns of behaviour which seem to resist any attempt at unification. Concentrated listening, the form of musical reception fostered by Western art music, now appears to be but one of the many ways in which audiences respond to organized sound. Cinema, for example, has developed specific ways of combining images and sounds; and, more recently, digital technology has redefined the standard forms of mass communication. Information is aestheticized, and music in turn is incorporated into pre-existing symbolic fields. This volume - the first in the series Musical Cultures of the Twentieth Century - offers a wide-ranging exploration of the relations between sound, technology and listening practices, considered from the complementary perspectives of art music and popular music, music theatre and multimedia, composition and performance, ethnographic and anthropological research.