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Can we speak of composition when we are in a state of decomposition? Art being made today as the world spins into chaos and disorder defies coherent categorization. Revising his well-known histories of contemporary art, Terry Smith argues that visual artists must respond to the compelling need for order and composition during this time of divisive difference. This second volume in the Contemporary Condition series traces how visual artists across the globe are rising to this challenge.
"...the best extant map of our sonic shadowlands, and it has changed how I listen."—Alex Ross, The New Yorker "...an essential survey of contemporary music."—New York Times "…sharp, provacative and always on the money. The listening list alone promises months of fresh discovery, the main text a fresh new way of navigating the world of sound."—The Wire 2017 Music Book of the Year—Alex Ross, The New Yorker Music after the Fall is the first book to survey contemporary Western art music within the transformed political, cultural, and technological environment of the post–Cold War era. In this book, Tim Rutherford-Johnson considers musical composition against this changed backdrop, placing it in the context of globalization, digitization, and new media. Drawing connections with the other arts, in particular visual art and architecture, he expands the definition of Western art music to include forms of composition, experimental music, sound art, and crossover work from across the spectrum, inside and beyond the concert hall. Each chapter is a critical consideration of a wide range of composers, performers, works, and institutions, and develops a broad and rich picture of the new music ecosystem, from North American string quartets to Lebanese improvisers, from electroacoustic music studios in South America to ruined pianos in the Australian outback. Rutherford-Johnson puts forth a new approach to the study of contemporary music that relies less on taxonomies of style and technique than on the comparison of different responses to common themes of permission, fluidity, excess, and loss.
What do we mean when we say that something is contemporary? And what should the designator contemporary art refer to? What constitutes the present present or the contemporary contemporary? Introductory Thoughts on Contemporaneity and Contemporary Art, the first book in the Contemporary Condition series, introduces key issues concerning contemporaneity as a defining condition of our historical present and calls for a deep rethinking of the structures of temporalization.
"Contemporary Composition is still inflected by the epistemic turn taken in the 1980s, convincing me that we need to remember what we've forgotten—namely, how impassioned resolves and thrilling discoveries were abandoned and why. I'd like to retrace the road not taken in Composition Studies, to salvage what can still be recovered... I want to inspect the wreckage, in order to show what was the promise of the Happenings for Composition, as well as the huge gray longueur of its pale replacement, Eighties Composition. In so doing, I hope to begin a reconfiguration of our field's pre- and after history." What happened to the bold, kicky promise of writing instruction in the 1960s? The current conservative trend in composition is analyzed allegorically by Geoffrey Sirc in this book-length homage to Charles Deemer's 1967 article, in which the theories and practices of Happenings artists (multi-disciplinary performance pioneers) were used to invigorate college writing. Sirc takes up Deemer's inquiry, moving through the material and theoretical concerns of such pre- and post-Happenings influences as Duchamp and Pollock, situationists and punks, as well as many of the Happenings artists proper.
Gertrude Stein's "Composition as Explanation" delves into the intricate relationship between language and artistic expression. Published in 1926, the essay explores Stein's unique approach to writing and challenges conventional perceptions of composition. With a distinctive prose style, she reflects on the nature of creativity, emphasizing the significance of repetition and abstraction. Stein's work serves as both an exploration of her own artistic process and a broader commentary on the essence of language in shaping our understanding of art.
In Composition and Cognition, renowned composer and theorist Fred Lerdahl builds on his careerlong work of developing a comprehensive model of music cognition. Bringing together his dual expertise in composition and music theory, he reveals the way in which his research has served as a foundation for his compositional style and how his intuitions as a composer have guided his cognitively oriented theories. At times personal and reflective, this book offers an overall picture of the musical mind that has implications for central issues in contemporary composition, including the recurrent gap between method and result, and the tension between cognitive constraints and utopian aesthetic views of musical progress. Lerdahl’s succinct volume provides invaluable insights for students and instructors, composers and music scholars, and anyone engaged with contemporary music.
Why has classical rhetoric been a subject of such growing interest for the past ten years? Because the most exciting work in classical rhetoric has asked us to rethink classical concepts in modern terms. What's been missing, at least in book-length form, is a scholarly rethinking of rhetorical memory and delivery. As many scholars have been noting in their work for some time now, three of five classical issues -- invention, arrangement, and style -- have dominated rhetorical studies while the other two -- memory and delivery -- have largely been misunderstood or ignored. Re-examined in light of recent research on orality, literacy, and electronic technology, rhetorical memory and delivery issues can become not only central to the field but also key to the continued interest in classical rhetoric. Bringing together national scholars from a variety of related disciplines in which rhetorical memory and delivery issues matter, this collection is the only volume that examines classical and contemporary interpretations of rhetorical memory and delivery in depth and detail.
The state of contemporary music is dizzyingly diverse in terms of style, media, traditions, and techniques. How have trends in music developed over the past decades? Music Composition in the 21st Century is a guide for composers and students that helps them navigate the often daunting complexity and abundance of resources and influences that confront them as they work to achieve a personal expression. From pop to classical, the book speaks to the creative ways that new composers mix and synthesize music, creating a music that exists along a more continuous spectrum rather than in a series of siloed practices. It pays special attention to a series of critical issues that have surfaced in recent years, including harmony, the influence of minimalism, the impact of technology, strategies of "openness," sound art, collaboration, and improvisation. Robert Carl identifies an emerging common practice that allows creators to make more informed aesthetic and technical decisions and also fosters an inherently positive approach to new methods.
Composition studies is a rapidly growing and constantly changing field. At present, however, graduate students new to the field and writing teachers who want to make new connections between theory and practice have little choice of current reference works that define key terms in composition studies and provide information about the scholars and researchers who have shaped and are shaping the discipline. This book supplies this information in an easily accessible format and places both scholars and terms in the context of the field's development. Included are alphabetically arranged entries for 108 individuals who have developed the field and 128 terms central to the discipline. The first part of the book provides entries for leaders in composition studies. Each entry identifies the areas in which the scholar has contributed most influentially to the field and provides both a chronological overview of the person's contributions and a bibliography of representative works. The second part includes entries for terms that are problematic both for newcomers and for those already familiar with the discipline. The entries for the terms show how the disciplinary context has shaped the ways in which they have been used. The entries also indicate how established thinkers in composition studies and other disciplines have explained or defined the terms, provide examples of the terms in context, and list scholars often associated with them. An appendix includes entries for scholars from other disciplines who have contributed to the field.
First published in 1999, this volume explores the great diversity of music created by African communities is reflected in this book, which discusses the ways in which a wide range of musical forms are composed and performed from Egypt to South Africa and from Ghana to Kenya. As two composers explain here, this diversity provides much inspiration for western contemporary composition. Particular attention is paid to the contexts generate musical creativity. Ceremonies and festivals celebrating birth, death, marriage or rites of passage provide the impetus for much composition and performance, enabling young people to pick up, early on, some of the techniques and styles of which they then become the new exponents. The book also looks at the role played by formal music education programmes and bodies such as the South African Music Rights Organization and the South African Broadcasting Corporation in fostering musical activity, as well as the contribution of composers to the social and political changes that have dominated South African life in recent years.