The Art Of Noise

The music and noise manifestos of the Italian Futurists formed a blueprint for sonic warfare waged against traditionalism, a radical new agenda played out with machines primed for maximal acoustic destruction and aimed at the negation of all existing value systems. THEe ^ARTe ^OFe ^NOISE collects together these and other writings for the first time in English, showing how the origins of modern noise music actually date from a century ago, forming an invaluable insight into Futurist thought and its most enduring and relevant legacies, and revealing how an understanding of noise-art is key to a complete comprehension of Futurist painting. THEe ^ARTe ^OFe ^NOISE includes five key Futurist manifestos: Luigi Russolo's "The Art of Noises" and "The Futurist Noise Machines", and Francesco Balilla Pratella's "Manifesto of Futurist Musicians", "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Music", and "Destruction of Quadrature"; plus Carlo Carra 's related sensory manifesto "The Painting of Sounds, Noises and Smells"; Bruno Corra's notes on "Chromatic Music"; proto-Futurist Ferrucchio Busoni's visionary and influential "Sketch for a New Aesthetic of Sound Art"; a historical introduction on Futurist music and its legacy; and a chronology of Futurist music and noise.

The second volume of this anthology of musical aesthetics proceeds from the rational, common-sense examination of the 18th-century artistic experience to the realm of 19th-century expressiveness. The rational foundation of aesthetics gave way to an emphasis on an art form's strength of feeling and expressive power, a purity of the creation and the creator. No longer confined to a restricted sense of beauty, music admitted the violent, the enormous and the ugly into its sphere of emotion, now the era of romanticism and Sturm und Drang. These developments are here detailed in the writings of Wackenroder, Herder, Thibaut, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kirkegaard, Wagner, Hanslick, Ambros, Nietzsche, Spencer, Gurney, and Haussegger. Through them we see the classical province of proportion, educated taste and contained expressiveness recede, and the emotional realism of music come to the fore.

(Technical Reference). More than simply the book of the award-winning DVD set, Art & Science of Sound Recording, the Book takes legendary engineer, producer, and artist Alan Parsons' approaches to sound recording to the next level. In book form, Parsons has the space to include more technical background information, more detailed diagrams, plus a complete set of course notes on each of the 24 topics, from "The Brief History of Recording" to the now-classic "Dealing with Disasters." Written with the DVD's coproducer, musician, and author Julian Colbeck, ASSR, the Book offers readers a classic "big picture" view of modern recording technology in conjunction with an almost encyclopedic list of specific techniques, processes, and equipment. For all its heft and authority authored by a man trained at London's famed Abbey Road studios in the 1970s ASSR, the Book is also written in plain English and is packed with priceless anecdotes from Alan Parsons' own career working with the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and countless others. Not just informative, but also highly entertaining and inspirational, ASSR, the Book is the perfect platform on which to build expertise in the art and science of sound recording.

THE ART OF NOISE offers an unprecedented collection of insightful, of-the-moment conversations with twenty-seven great British songwriters and composers. They discuss everything from their individual approaches to writing, to the inspiration behind their most successful songs, to the techniques and methods they have independently developed to foster their creativity. Contributors include: Sting * Ray Davies * Robin Gibb * Jimmy Page * Joan Armatrading * Noel Gallagher * Lily Allen * Annie Lennox * Damon Albarn * Noel Gallagher * Laura Marling * Paul Weller * Johnny Marr * and many more Musician-turned-author Daniel Rachel approaches each interview with an impressive depth of understanding—of the practice of songwriting, but also of each musician's catalog. The result is a collection of conversations that's probing, informed, and altogether entertaining—what contributor Noel Gallagher called "without doubt the finest book I've ever read about songwriters and the songs they write." The collected experience of these songwriters makes this book the essential word of songwriting—as spoken by the songwriters themselves.

“Luigi Russolo is increasingly being recognized as an important figure in 20th century art and music, and his work deserves to be better understood. Chessa’s archival research and readings of esoteric or otherwise little-known texts are impressive, and he offers a convincing account of the influence of the occult on Russolo and the Futurists in general. This book alters our conception of Russolo, Futurism, and the early artistic avant-garde.”—Christoph Cox, Hampshire College “This book is timely, and merits the attention of a wider audience. Luigi Russolo, futurista makes a compelling argument that radically revises our views on a major creative figure of the twentieth century. Luciano Chessa provides vast amounts of information on the ideas and trends that influenced the Futurists, and offers a wealth of insight and observations that point the way for further research on avant-garde music and art in the twentieth century.”—Paul DeMarinis, Department of Art and Art History, Stanford University

A fresh, bold study of the emerging field of Sound Art, informed by the ideas of Adorno, Merleau-Ponty and others.

The rise of a prominent auditory culture, reveals the degree to which sound art is lending definition to the 21st Century. And yet sound art still lacks related literature to compliment, and expand, the realm of practice. Background Noise sets out an historical overview, while at the same time shaping that history according to what sound art reveals - the dynamics of art to operate spatially, through media of reproduction and broadcast, and in relation to the intensities of communication and its contextual framework

This book introduces a subject that will be new to many: sonic arts. The application of sound to other media (such as film or video) is well known and the idea of sound as a medium in its own right (such as radio) is also widely accepted. However, the idea that sound could also be a distinct art form by itself is less well established and often misunderstood. The Fundamentals of Sonic Art & Sound Design introduces, describes and begins the process of defining this new subject and to provide a starting point for anyone who has an interest in the creative uses of sound. The book explores the worlds of sonic art and sound design through their history and development, and looks at the present state of these extraordinarily diverse genres through the works and words of established artists and through an examination of the wide range of practices that currently come under the heading of sonic arts. The technologies that are used and the impact that they have upon the work are also discussed. Additionally, The Fundamentals of Sonic Art & Sound Design considers new and radical approaches to sound recording, performance, installation works and exhibitions and visits the worlds of the sonic artist and the sound designer.

Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the Year Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007 Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007 A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007 In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.

From the bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending comes an extraordinary fictional portrait of the relentlessly fascinating Russian musician and composer Dmitri Shostakovich and a stunning meditation on the meaning of art and its place in society. • “Brilliant…. As elegantly constructed as a concerto.” —NPR 1936: Dmitri Shostakovich, just thirty years old, reckons with the first of three conversations with power that will irrevocably shape his life. Stalin, hitherto a distant figure, has suddenly denounced the young composer’s latest opera. Certain he will be exiled to Siberia (or, more likely, shot dead on the spot), Shostakovich reflects on his predicament, his personal history, his parents, his daughter—all of those hanging in the balance of his fate. And though a stroke of luck prevents him from becoming yet another casualty of the Great Terror, he will twice more be swept up by the forces of despotism: coerced into praising the Soviet state at a cultural conference in New York in 1948, and finally bullied into joining the Party in 1960. All the while, he is compelled to constantly weigh the specter of power against the integrity of his music.