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The experimental composer John Cage (1912-1992) is best known for his works in percussion, prepared piano, and electronic music, but he is also acknowledged to be one of the most significant figures in 20th century theatre. In Cage's work in theatre composition there is a blurring of the distinctions between music, dance, literature, art and everyday life. Here, William Fetterman examines the majority of those compositions by Cage which are audial as well as visual in content, beginning with his first work in this genre in 1952, and continuing through 1992. Much of the information in this study comes from previously undocumented material discovered among the unpublished scores and notes of Cage and his frequent collaborator David Tudor, as well as author's interviews with Cage and with individuals closely associated with his work, including David Tudor, Merce Cunningham, Bonnie Bird, Mary Caroline Richards, and Ellsworth Snyder.
Kenneth H. Marcus shows how Schoenberg played a vital role in Southern California Modernism through his pedagogy, compositions, and texts.
In this text Bruns investigates the recent phenomenon of philosophers taking an interest in literature and literary theory.
A social history of music in Los Angeles from the 1880s to 1940, this title ventures into an often neglected period to discover that during America's Progressive Era, LA was a centre for making music long before it became a major metropolis.
Christopher Shultis observes an intriguing contrast between John Cage's affinity for Thoreau and fellow composer Charles Ives' connection with Emerson. Although both Thoreau and Emerson have been called transcendentalists, they held different views about the relationship between nature and humanity and the artistÍs role in creativity. Shultis explores the artist's "sounded" or "silenced" selves-the self that takes control of the creative experience versus the one that seeks to coexist with it-and shows how understanding this distinction allows a better understanding of Cage. Having placed Cage in this experimental tradition of music, poetry, and literature, Shultis offers provocative interpretations of Cage's aesthetic views, especially as they concern the issue of non-intention, and addresses some of his most path-breaking music as well as several experimentally innovative written works.
«Reading Thoreau's Journal, I discover any idea I've ever had worth its salt,» notes the American composer John Cage in 1968. Upon reading the words of nineteenth-century nature philosopher Henry Thoreau, Cage is immediately fascinated with the Transcendentalist's ideas, in particular his views on music and silence. Recognizing his own beliefs in Thoreau's writings, Cage began to rely heavily on the thoughts of the nineteenth-century man and implement them as the basis for his own compositions - both musical and written. Drawing on the complete oeuvres of Cage's and Thoreau's written works, this book surveys the intertextual relation between the writings of the two men. In the juxtaposition of these authors' aesthetics, this book reveals surprising overlaps in the thoughts of Cage and Thoreau.
Are the performing arts really supposed to be so radical that, as John Cage once said in the context of music, “there is no noise, only sound,” since “he argued that any sounds we can hear can be music”? (WK 2007a; D. Harwood 1976) This radical tradition in performing arts, with music as an example here, can be contrasted with an opposing view in the older days, when “Greek philosophers and medieval theorists in music defined music as tones ordered horizontally as melodies, and vertically as harmonies. Music theory, within this realm, is studied with the presupposition that music is orderly and often pleasant to hear.” (WK 2007a) Contrary to these opposing traditions (and other v...
The last - and largest - of Cage's most important formative exchanges of letters, discussing music criticism and questions of aesthetics.
Over three decades, Paul Griffiths's survey has remained the definitive study of music since the Second World War; this fully revised and updated edition re-establishes Modern Music and After as the preeminent introduction to the music of our time. The disruptions of the war, and the struggles of the ensuing peace, were reflected in the music of the time: in Pierre Boulez's radical reformation of compositional technique and in John Cage's development of zen music; in Milton Babbitt's settling of the serial system and in Dmitry Shostakovich's unsettling symphonies; in Karlheinz Stockhausen's development of electronic music and in Luigi Nono's pursuit of the universally human, in Iannis Xenaki...
Employs a psychoanalytic methodology to investigate the importance of Buddhist discourse on both canonical and alternative writing practices.