Sounds And Society

In this pioneering new book, Dr Martin presents a lively and accessible introduction to the social analysis of music. Dr Martin argues that musical meaning must be understood as socially constructed, rather than inherent, and that the notion of a correspondence between social and musical structures is highly problematic. An alternative approach, based on the ‘social action’ pespective is outlined, and the book concludes with a discussion of the social situation of music in advanced capitalist society. Along the way, leading thinkers are introduced: Adorno, Weber and Schntz as well as, more recently, John Shepherd and the feminist musicologists. The book draws on studies spanning the whole spectrum of Western music - rock bands to symphony orchestras, medieval plainchant to avant-garde jazz and concludes with a discussion of the social situation of music in advanced capitalist society.

Crossley argues that music is a form of social interaction, interwoven in the fabric of society and in constant interplay with its other threads. Musical interactions are often also economic interactions, for example, and sometimes political interactions. They can be forms of identity work, for both individuals and collectives, contributing to the reproduction or bridging of social divisions. Successive chapters of the book track and explore these interplays, in each case combining a critical consideration of existing literature with the development of an original, ‘relational’ approach to music sociology. The result is a grand sociological vision of music which captures not only music’s context but ‘the music itself’. The book will appeal to social scientists, musicologists and cultural scholars more widely.

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.

Scholars consider sound and its concepts, taking as their premise the idea that popular culture can be analyzed in an innovative way through sound. The wide-ranging texts in this book take as their premise the idea that sound is a subject through which popular culture can be analyzed in an innovative way. From an infant's gurgles over a baby monitor to the roar of the crowd in a stadium to the sub-bass frequencies produced by sound systems in the disco era, sound—not necessarily aestheticized as music—is inextricably part of the many domains of popular culture. Expanding the view taken by many scholars of cultural studies, the contributors consider cultural practices concerning sound not merely as semiotic or signifying processes but as material, physical, perceptual, and sensory processes that integrate a multitude of cultural traditions and forms of knowledge. The chapters discuss conceptual issues as well as terminologies and research methods; analyze historical and contemporary case studies of listening in various sound cultures; and consider the ways contemporary practices of sound generation are applied in the diverse fields in which sounds are produced, mastered, distorted, processed, or enhanced. The chapters are not only about sound; they offer a study through sound—echoes from the past, resonances of the present, and the contradictions and discontinuities that suggest the future. Contributors Karin Bijsterveld, Susanne Binas-Preisendörfer, Carolyn Birdsall, Jochen Bonz, Michael Bull, Thomas Burkhalter, Mark J. Butler, Diedrich Diederichsen, Veit Erlmann, Franco Fabbri, Golo Föllmer, Marta García Quiñones, Mark Grimshaw, Rolf Großmann, Maria Hanáček, Thomas Hecken, Anahid Kassabian, Carla J. Maier, Andrea Mihm, Bodo Mrozek, Carlo Nardi, Jens Gerrit Papenburg, Thomas Schopp, Holger Schulze, Toby Seay, Jacob Smith, Paul Théberge, Peter Wicke, Simon Zagorski-Thomas

From Tin Pan Alley to grand opera, player-pianos to phonograph records, David Suisman’s Selling Sounds explores the rise of music as big business and the creation of a radically new musical culture. Around the turn of the twentieth century, music entrepreneurs laid the foundation for today’s vast industry, with new products, technologies, and commercial strategies to incorporate music into the daily rhythm of modern life. Popular songs filled the air with a new kind of musical pleasure, phonographs brought opera into the parlor, and celebrity performers like Enrico Caruso captivated the imagination of consumers from coast to coast. Selling Sounds uncovers the origins of the culture industry in music and chronicles how music ignited an auditory explosion that penetrated all aspects of society. It maps the growth of the music business across the social landscape—in homes, theaters, department stores, schools—and analyzes the effect of this development on everything from copyright law to the sensory environment. While music came to resemble other consumer goods, its distinct properties as sound ensured that its commercial growth and social impact would remain unique. Today, the music that surrounds us—from iPods to ring tones to Muzak—accompanies us everywhere from airports to grocery stores. The roots of this modern culture lie in the business of popular song, player-pianos, and phonographs of a century ago. Provocative, original, and lucidly written, Selling Sounds reveals the commercial architecture of America’s musical life.

This book contains a complete and accurate mathematical treatment of the sounds of music with an emphasis on musical timbre. The book spans the range from tutorial introduction to advanced research and application to speculative assessment of its various techniques. All the contributors use a generalized additive sine wave model for describing musical timbre which gives a conceptual unity, but is of sufficient utility to be adapted to many different tasks.

Argues that music is an instrument of identity for ethnic groups and describes how music was used in Chicago to promote civic engagement and educate the community.

Sounds in Translation: Intersections of music, technology and society joins a growing number of publications taking up R. Murray Schafer's challenge to examine and to re-focus attention on the sound dimensions of our human environment. This book takes up his challenge to contemporary audiologists, musicologists and sound artists working within areas of music, cultural studies, media studies and social science to explore the idea of the 'soundscape' and to investigate the acoustic environment that we inhabit. It seeks to raise questions regarding the translative process of sound: 1) what happens to sound during the process of transfer and transformation; and 2) what transpires in the process of sound production/expression/performance. Sounds in Translation was conceived to take advantage of new technology and a development in book publishing, the electronic book. Much of what is written in the book is best illustrated by the sound itself, and in that sense, permits sound to 'speak for itself'.