Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music

The groundbreaking Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (Continuum; September 2004; paperback original) maps the aural and discursive terrain of vanguard music today. Rather than offering a history of contemporary music, Audio Culture traces the genealogy of current musical practices and theoretical concerns, drawing lines of connection between recent musical production and earlier moments of sonic experimentation. It aims to foreground the various rewirings of musical composition and performance that have taken place in the past few decades and to provide a critical and theoretical language for this new audio culture.Via writings by philosophers, cultural theorists, and composers, Audio Culture explores the interconnections among such forms as minimalism, indeterminacy, musique concrete, free improvisation, experimental music, avant-rock, dub reggae, Ambient music, HipHop, and Techno. Instead of focusing on the putative crossover between high art and popular culture, Audio Culture takes all of these musics as experimental practices on par with, and linked to, one another. While cultural studies has tended to look at music (primarily popular music) from a sociological perspective, the concern here is philosophical, musical, and historical.Audio Culture includes writing by some of the most important musical thinkers of the past half-century, among them John Cage, Brian Eno, Glenn Gould, Umberto Eco, Ornette Coleman, Jacques Attali, Simon Reynolds, Pauline Oliveros, Paul D. Miller, David Toop, John Zorn, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and many others. The book is divided into nine thematically-organized sections, each with its own introduction. Section headings include topics such as Modes of Listening, Minimalisms, and DJ Culture. In addition, each essay has its own short introduction, helping the reader to place the essay within musical, historical, and conceptual contexts. The book concludes with a glossary, a timeline, and an extensive discography.

Rather than offering a history of contemporary music, this book traces the genealogy of contemporary musical practices and theoretical concerns, connecting recent musical practices and earlier moments of experimentation.

Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music attempts to map the aural and discursive terrain of vanguard musical culture today. Rather than offering a history of contemporary music, this book traces the genealogy of contemporary musical practices and theoretical concerns, drawing lines of connection between recent musical practices and earlier moments of sonic experimentation. It aims to foreground the various rewirings of musical composition and performance that have taken place in the past few decades and to provide a critical and theoretical language for this new audio culture. Via writings by philosophers, cultural theorists, and composers, the book explores the interconnections among such forms as Minimalism, Indeterminacy, musique concrete, Improvised Music, the Classical Avant Garde, Experimental Music, Avant-Rock, Dub Reggae, Ambient Music, Hip Hop, and Techno. Rather than focusing on the putative "crossover" between "high art" and "low art" in the new audio culture, the book takes all of these musics as experimental practices on par with, and linked to, one another. While cultural studies has tended to look at music (primarily popular music) from a sociological perspective, the concern here is philosophical, musical, and historical. As such, the book poses and seeks to answer questions such as: What new modes of production, circulation, reception, and discourse do these new musical practices mobilize? How do these practices complicate the definition of "music" and its distinction from "silence," "noise," and "sound"? In what ways do they challenge traditional conceptions of authorship, textuality, and ownership? The book includes writings by: Jacques Attali, John Cage, SimonReynolds, Brian Eno, Glenn Gould, Umberto Eco, Michael Nyman, Ornette Coleman, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and many others.