Music of the Twentieth Century

Music of the Twentieth Century
Author: Ton de Leeuw
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2005
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9053567658

Ton de Leeuw was a truly groundbreaking composer. As evidenced by his pioneering study of compositional methods that melded Eastern traditional music with Western musical theory, he had a profound understanding of the complex and often divisive history of twentieth-century music. Now his renowned chronicle Music of the Twentieth Century is offered here in a newly revised English-language edition. Music of the Twentieth Century goes beyond a historical survey with its lucid and impassioned discussion of the elements, structures, compositional principles, and terminologies of twentieth-century music. De Leeuw draws on his experience as a composer, teacher, and music scholar of non-European music traditions, including Indian, Indonesian, and Japanese music, to examine how musical innovations that developed during the twentieth century transformed musical theory, composition, and scholarly thought around the globe.

Music, Evolution, and the Harmony of Souls

Music, Evolution, and the Harmony of Souls
Author: Alan R. Harvey
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2017
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0198786859

Music is central to human cultural and intellectual experience. It is vitally important for the welfare of human society and - this book argues - should become more widely accepted in our community as a mainstream educational and therapeutic tool. This book explores the importance of music throughout human evolution, and its continued relevance to modern-day human society. Throughout, the emphasis is on the origin of music and how (and where) it is processed in our brains, exploring in detail the genetic and cultural evolution of modern, loquacious humans, how we may have evolved with unique neural and cognitive architecture, and why two complementary but distinct communication systems - language and music - remain a human universal. In addition the book explores, in some depth, the different theories that have been put forward to explain why musical communication was (and remains) advantageous to our species, with a particular emphasis on the role of music and dance in enhancing altruistic and prosocial behaviours. The author suggests that music, and the social harmonization it brings, was of vital importance in early humans as we became more and more individualized by the emergence of modern language and the modern mind, and the realization that we are mortal. Music, Evolution, and the Harmony of Souls demonstrates the evolutionary sociobiological importance of music as a driver of cooperative and interactive behaviour throughout human existence, and what this evolutionary imperative means to twenty-first century humanity and beyond, from social and medical/neurological perspectives

Harmony and Dissent

Harmony and Dissent
Author: R. Bruce Elder
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
Total Pages: 518
Release: 2008-10-02
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1554580285

R. Bruce Elder argues that the authors of many of the manifestoes that announced in such lively ways the appearance of yet another artistic movement shared a common aspiration: they proposed to reformulate the visual, literary, and performing arts so that they might take on attributes of the cinema. The cinema, Elder argues, became, in the early decades of the twentieth century, a pivotal artistic force around which a remarkable variety and number of aesthetic forms took shape. To demonstrate this, Elder begins with a wide-ranging discussion that opens up some broad topics concerning modernity’s cognitive (and perceptual) regime, with a view to establishing that a crisis within that regime engendered some peculiar, and highly questionable, epistemological beliefs and enthusiasms. Through this discussion, Elder advances the startling claim that a crisis of cognition precipitated by modernity engendered, by way of response, a peculiar sort of “pneumatic (spiritual) epistemology.” Elder then shows that early ideas of the cinema were strongly influenced by this pneumatic epistemology and uses this conception of the cinema to explain its pivotal role in shaping two key moments in early-twentieth-century art: the quest to bring forth a pure, “objectless” (non-representational) art and Russian Suprematism, Constructivism, and Productivism.

Music and International History in the Twentieth Century

Music and International History in the Twentieth Century
Author: Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2015-04-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1782385010

Bringing together scholars from the fields of musicology and international history, this book investigates the significance of music to foreign relations, and how it affected the interaction of nations since the late 19th century. For more than a century, both state and non-state actors have sought to employ sound and harmony to influence allies and enemies, resolve conflicts, and export their own culture around the world. This book asks how we can understand music as an instrument of power and influence, and how the cultural encounters fostered by music changes our ideas about international history.

The Development of Harmony in Scriabin's Works

The Development of Harmony in Scriabin's Works
Author: Peter Sabbagh
Publisher: Universal-Publishers
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2003
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9781581125955

In the history of music there are seldom as rapid musical developments as we can find in Scriabin's works. In only 31 years Scriabin made a breathtaking development: in his early works he still uses a romantic tonal language, while his later works are far-reaching into the 20th century. Scriabin's development is gradual and consequent, each step can be derived from the preceding, thus connecting the music of the 19th and 20th centuries. He can be regarded as a key composer of his age.Harmony is the central factor in Scriabin's musical thinking. From harmony everything else is developed. It defines the form, also the melody and tone systems are developed from it.This book is concerned with the following basic issues: Which elements in Scriabin's harmony are new, and what has been derived from the tradition? Why is the development in Scriabin's works consequent, once started, why did it have to follow a certain course? Is there something elemental in Scriabin's way of thinking that pushes ahead this development?

Tonal Harmony, with an Introduction to Twentieth-century Music

Tonal Harmony, with an Introduction to Twentieth-century Music
Author: Stefan M. Kostka
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2000
Genre: Harmony
ISBN: 9780072419962

Tonal Harmony with an Introduction to 20th-Century Music is intended for a two-year course in music theory/harmony. It offers a clear and thorough introduction to the resources and practice of Western music from the 17th century to the present day. Its concise, one-volume format and flexible approach make the book usable in a broad range of theory curricula. The text provides students with a comprehensive but accessible and highly practical set of tools for the understanding of music. Actual musical practice is emphasized more than rules or prohibitions. Principles are explained and illustrated, and exceptions are noted. In its presentation of harmonic procedures, the text introduces students to the most common vocal and instrumental textures encountered in tonal music. Traditional four-part chorale settings are used to introduce many concepts, but three-part instrumental and vocal textures are also presented in illustrations and drill work, along with a variety of keyboard styles. To encourage the correlation of writing and performing skills, we have included musical examples in score and reduced-score formats as well as charts on instrumental ranges and transpositions. Some of the assignments ask the student to write for small ensembles suitable for performance in class. Instructors may modify these assignments to make them most appropriate for their particular situations. - Preface.

Chaos and Harmony

Chaos and Harmony
Author: Xuan Thuan Trinh
Publisher:
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2001
Genre: Science
ISBN:

For 300 years, Trinh Xuan Thuan writes, since the time of Isaac Newton, scientists saw reality as a giant clock--a sterile mechanism in which one part acts on another in a deterministic fashion. But the discoveries of the last few decades have changed all that, conjuring up instead a universe brimming with unpredictability, creativity, and chance. Writing with exceptional grace and clarity, Thuan vividly describes these important scientific discoveries, intriguing new theories about chaos, gravity, strange attractors, fractals, symmetry, superstrings, and the strangeness of atoms. Equally important, he reveals how these discoveries have shaped our view of the universe--for instance, how quantum mechanics brought indeterminism to the subatomic universe. Thuan deftly describes quantum mechanics, discusses its relationship to the theories of relativity (which deal inability to accept it. Indeed, throughout Chaos and Harmony, he makes clear as never before the mind-bending ideas of modern physics, such as the effect of gravity on time (it slows it down), the impossibility of crossing the speed-of-light barrier (it would actually reverse time), the role of fractals as "the language of nature," and the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in understanding the universe. From the subatomic world to the vast realm of quasars and galaxies, from the nature of mathematics to the fractal characteristics of the human circulatory system, Trinh Xuan Thuan takes us on a breathtaking tour of the universe. With striking examples and clear, plain language, he shows how science has actually restored mystery to the world around us--a world of symmetry and chaos, contingency and creativity.