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From the winds of Mars to a baby's first laugh, a prolific philosopher-composer reflects on the profound imperative of sound in everyday life.
Experiencing Sound presents its subject as fundamental to all experience—sensation, perception, and understanding. Lawrence Kramer turns on its head the widespread notion that vision takes pride of place among the senses and demonstrates how paying attention to sound can transform how we make meaning out of experience.
Through a series of brief, lyrical forays, Kramer shows that sound, whether heard or unheard, is the object of a primary need and an essential component in the sensation of being alive and the perception of time. It is something that we may suffer—or be made to suffer—as well as enjoy. Like its predecessor The Hum of the World, this book ranges widely across music, philosophy, literature, art, media, and history, from classical antiquity to the present, as it invites us to experience sound anew.
Experiencing Sound presents its subject as fundamental to all experience—sensation, perception, and understanding. Lawrence Kramer turns on its head the widespread notion that vision takes pride of place among the senses and demonstrates how paying attention to sound can transform how we make meaning out of experience.
Through a series of brief, lyrical forays, Kramer shows that sound, whether heard or unheard, is the object of a primary need and an essential component in the sensation of being alive and the perception of time. It is something that we may suffer—or be made to suffer—as well as enjoy. Like its predecessor The Hum of the World, this book ranges widely across music, philosophy, literature, art, media, and history, from classical antiquity to the present, as it invites us to experience sound anew.
Price: $27.95
Pages: 196
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Publication Date:
03 September 2024
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780520400849
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:
“In Experiencing Sound, Lawrence Kramer captures all sorts of heard moments, and in superb prose. . . . Rarely has the mixture of music and sound been so eagerly explored."
Lawrence Kramer is Distinguished Professor of English and Music at Fordham University. He is the author of fifteen previous books, including The Thought of Music, The Hum of the World, and Music and the Forms of Life. He is also an award-winning composer whose works have been performed throughout the United States and Europe.
Contents
Preface
Introduction
1. June 24, 2019: The Wind on Mars
2. Listening for the Llamas
3. Auditory Epiphanies
4. Sound and World
5. Listening to Silence
6. Calm Sea: Going Nowhere, Hearing Nothing
7. Prisons of Silence
8. Just One Sound
9. Song and Sound
10. Already Music
11. Coming Alive
12. The Vocal Telegraph
13. The Ravished Ear
14. Campaniles
15. Cannonades
16. Soundless Hearing
17. The Talking Dead
18. From Sounds to Sound
19. Fictitious Sounds
20. Bells
21. Dis/Embodiment
22. Threads
23. Playback
24. Shorthand
25. Poems to Music
26. Grooves
27. Grooves II: Spacing
28. Beyond Analogy
29. Phonogram and Gramophone
30. Forest Murmurs
31. Epithet
32. Mesmerizing Sound
33. Cathay
34. Night. A Street. No Lamps.
35. The Resonating Cure
36. The Voice of Language
37. Nocturne. Another City.
38. Annals of Slavery: A Violin
39. The Grammar of Uncertainty
40. Aftersounds
41. Persistence of Hearing
42. Annals of Slavery II: A Vigil
43. A Voice in a Box
44. The Contralto Mystique: Intercession
45. The Contralto Mystique II: Departure
46. Two Lynchings
47. “White Christmas”: Saigon, 1975
48. The Ghetto: New York, 1904
49. Testimony
50. Voice
51. Inner Speech
52. The Deafness of Narcissus
53. Sound in the Making
54. Housewarming
55. Language Dead or Alive
56. Hearing Plato’s Cave
57. Speaking and Being
58. Minding the Senses
59. LP: Longplayer
60. Harmonies of the World
61. Uneven Measures
62. Sound, Finitude, Music
63. The Shards of the Infinite
64. A Passing Synthesis
65. Aeolian Visitations
66. Harmonizing
Notes
Index
Preface
Introduction
1. June 24, 2019: The Wind on Mars
2. Listening for the Llamas
3. Auditory Epiphanies
4. Sound and World
5. Listening to Silence
6. Calm Sea: Going Nowhere, Hearing Nothing
7. Prisons of Silence
8. Just One Sound
9. Song and Sound
10. Already Music
11. Coming Alive
12. The Vocal Telegraph
13. The Ravished Ear
14. Campaniles
15. Cannonades
16. Soundless Hearing
17. The Talking Dead
18. From Sounds to Sound
19. Fictitious Sounds
20. Bells
21. Dis/Embodiment
22. Threads
23. Playback
24. Shorthand
25. Poems to Music
26. Grooves
27. Grooves II: Spacing
28. Beyond Analogy
29. Phonogram and Gramophone
30. Forest Murmurs
31. Epithet
32. Mesmerizing Sound
33. Cathay
34. Night. A Street. No Lamps.
35. The Resonating Cure
36. The Voice of Language
37. Nocturne. Another City.
38. Annals of Slavery: A Violin
39. The Grammar of Uncertainty
40. Aftersounds
41. Persistence of Hearing
42. Annals of Slavery II: A Vigil
43. A Voice in a Box
44. The Contralto Mystique: Intercession
45. The Contralto Mystique II: Departure
46. Two Lynchings
47. “White Christmas”: Saigon, 1975
48. The Ghetto: New York, 1904
49. Testimony
50. Voice
51. Inner Speech
52. The Deafness of Narcissus
53. Sound in the Making
54. Housewarming
55. Language Dead or Alive
56. Hearing Plato’s Cave
57. Speaking and Being
58. Minding the Senses
59. LP: Longplayer
60. Harmonies of the World
61. Uneven Measures
62. Sound, Finitude, Music
63. The Shards of the Infinite
64. A Passing Synthesis
65. Aeolian Visitations
66. Harmonizing
Notes
Index