On the fragility of life

A conversation of rare depth and tenderness, On the Fragility of Life finds Nick Cave reflecting on love, loss, faith, and the fragile beauty of being alive.

Arvo pärt

Scholarly writing on the music of Arvo Pärt is situated primarily in the fields of musicology, cultural and media studies, and, more recently, in terms of theology/spirituality. Arvo Pärt: Sounding the Sacred focuses on the representational dimensions of Pärt’s music (including the trope of silen...

Encyclopedia of political record labels

A love letter to over 750 record labels which produced political music as a medium for improving our communities and world.

The sounds of poetry viewed as music

Poets, literary critics, and lovers of poetry often speak of the “music of poetry.” This book gives substance to the metaphor by building on recent research in linguistics and music theory to propose a theory of the sounds of poetry conceived in musical terms.

The discourse community of electronic dance music

Anita Jóri considers the world of electronic dance music as a discourse community. She gives an overview on the language use and discourse characteristics of this community while applying a mixed methodology of linguistic discourse analysis and cultural studies.

Music – media – history

This volume considers audiovisual material as a primary source for historiography. By analyzing how the same sounds are used in different media contexts at different times, the contributors challenge the linear perspective of music history based on canonical authority.

The work of opera

Music at the limits

Music at the Limits is the first book to bring together three decades of Edward W. Said's essays and articles on music. Addressing the work of a variety of composers, musicians, and performers, Said carefully draws out music's social, political, and cultural contexts and, as a classically trained...

Kompositionen für hörbaren raum / compositions for audible space

The integration of audible space is a central aspect of electroacoustic music. Ever since the earliest analogue days of electroacoustic music, pioneers of the genre – including Pierre Schaeffer, Iannis Xenakis, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Luigi Nono – used special devices and methods for their com...

A short history of opera

When first published in 1947, A Short History of Opera immediately achieved international status as a classic in the field. Now, more than five decades later, this thoroughly revised and expanded fourth edition informs and entertains opera lovers just as its predecessors have.The fourth edition i...

Anonymity performance in electronic pop music

This study sketches two musico-artistic projects of anonymity performance as forms of immanent and particulate critical practice in the sense of Judith Butler and Michel Foucault. Adopting performance in a reflexive and performative writing style, this performance ethnography calls for a radical ...

Women's leadership in music

The contributors ask what can be considered as leadership in culture from a female point of view today.

Said on opera

This book presents Edward W. Said’s insightful and elegant analyses of four major operas—originally delivered as the Empson Lectures at Cambridge University in 1997—showcasing the power of his critical acumen to unsettle canonical interpretations.

Curating contemporary music festivals

Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in contemporary music and how they could be a solution to the field’s diminishing social relevance. He focuses on two case studies, the Munich Biennale for New Music Theatre, and the Maerzmusik Festival at the Berliner Fe...

Musical elaborations

Filling a significant gap in contemporary cultural studies, Musical Elaborations examines the intersection of the public and private meaning of music. Incorporating the music criticism of Adorno, musical ideas from literary works by Proust, and criticism by Benjamin and de Man into his work, note...

Dvs mindz

DVS Mindz might be the greatest rap group you’ve never heard of. Geoff Harkness takes readers on a unique two-decade journey alongside the members of DVS Mindz, chronicling their childhoods, their brush with success, and what became of them in the years that followed.

Music practices across borders

Reconnecting migration studies and the theory of valuation, this collection offers an interdisciplinary approach to the study of transnational music practices. Through these practices, values are created and shared which connect a way of music making with objects and places of experiencing music ...

Decentering musical modernity

This collection investigates the concept of modernity in music and its multiple interpretations in Europe and Asia. Through contributions by both European and Asian musicologists it discusses decentering understanding of musical modernity, while attentive to the specificities of local music.

The velvet lounge

Troubled urban neighborhoods and jazz-club havens were the backdrop of Gerald Majer's life growing up in sixties and seventies Chicago. The Velvet Lounge, an original hybrid of memoir, biography, and musical description, reflects this history and pursues a sustained meditation on jazz along with ...

Experiencing music video

Music videos have ranged from simple tableaux of a band playing its instruments to multimillion dollar, high-concept extravaganzas. Born of a sudden expansion in new broadcast channels, music videos continue to exert an enormous influence on popular music. They help to create an artist's identity...

Musical practice as a form of life

How is musical practice connected with everyday life? Eva-Maria Houben shows that performing music as an activity—indeed, as playing—allows meaning to unfold in specific situations, places, and relationships.

Tuning up! the innovative potential of musikvermittlung

Various actors in the field of classical music have developed a wide range of new artistic and educational practices over the last two decades, aiming to facilitate in-depth aesthetic experiences, bond with new audiences, and encourage active cultural participation. The contributors focus on the ...

Popular music and public diplomacy

In the early years of the Cold War, Western nations increasingly adopted strategies of public diplomacy involving popular music. While the diplomatic use of popular music was initially limited to such genres as jazz, the second half of the 20th century saw a growing presence of various popular ge...

Nuthin' but a "g" thang

In the late 1980s, gangsta rap music emerged in urban America, giving voice to—and making money for—a social group widely considered to be in crisis: young, poor, black men. From its local origins, gangsta rap went on to flood the mainstream, generating enormous popularity and profits. Yet the hi...

Tyranny of style

A defence of the composer’s duty to the text: not to entertain, not to soothe, but to translate meaning with precision and depth.

Music, madness, and the unworking of language

In the romantic tradition, music is consistently associated with madness, either as cause or cure. Writers as diverse as Kleist, Hoffmann, and Nietzsche articulated this theme, which in fact reaches back to classical antiquity and continues to resonate in the modern imagination. What John Hamilto...

Before sound

In Before Sound, composer Tiziano Manca investigates the relationship between sounding body and musician.

Transfigured new york

Transfigured New York presents conversations with iconic, genre-bending artists who shaped the sounds of experimental movements like no wave, avant-jazz, and electronic music.

Afroasian musical imaginaries

This book is a collection of papers presented at a colloquium, ‘AfroAsian Musical Imaginaries’ that was organized by the IIC-IRD in collaboration with a project titled ‘RecentringAfroAsia: Musical and Human Migrations, 700-1500 AD’ that started from Cape Town in South Africa.

Sponsorship culture in the german university popular music festival market

Dominik Nösner examines sponsorship culture, and the interrelations between sponsors and audience with an emphasis on university popular music festivals.

From vocal poetry to song

Although the song is often the subject of monographs, one of its forms remains insufficiently researched: the vocalized song, communicated to the spectator through performance. The study of the song takes one back to the study of vocal practices, from aesthetic objects to forms and to plural styl...

It's how you flip it

This book investigates the possibilities and limits of working with hip-hop as a pedagogical tool.

Musical composition in the context of globalization

This book discusses the effects of cultural globalization on processes of composition and distribution of art music in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Christian Utz provides the foundations of a global music historiography, building on new models such as transnationalism, entangled hist...

Xenakis – back to the roots

This book includes contributions by companions of Xenakis and renowned experts in Xenakis research with studies in philology of electroacoustic music.

China sounds across borders

By weaving historical depth with global perspectives, this book offers a comparative lens to understand the dynamic role of sound in China’s transnational interactions and cultural negotiation.

Last night a dj saved my life

Freshly revised and chock-full of new, vibrant stories, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life is the “lively and . . . necessary” (New York Times Book Review), and first and foremost definitive history of the musical outlaws who revolutionized the music industry: the disc jockeysTwenty-five years since i...

Her word is bond

Her Word is Bond recounts the triumphs and setbacks of a rap legend who blazed a new trail for women in hip hop.

Musicians on twitch

Musicians on Twitch examines the lives of musicians navigating Twitch’s attention-driven ecosystem. Through interviews and observations, it reveals the tensions between creativity, financial stability and well-being, offering critical insights into the intersection of music, technology and creati...

Music in edwardian london

Traversing London's musical culture, this book boldly illuminates the emergence of Edwardian London as a beacon of musical innovation.The dawning of a new century saw London emerge as a hub in a fast-developing global music industry, mirroring Britain's pivotal position between the continent, the...