The concept of music / Robin Maconie.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Maconie, Robin.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Music--Philosophy and aesthetics.

Music.

Music--Acoustics and physics.

Music theory.

Physical Description:

187 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford [England] : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1990.

Summary:

Maconie makes us look afresh at the elements of music, examining how the development of modes and scales, keyboards, even the details of sharps and flats, can each be linked to changes in the way the world is perceived and understood. He shows how traditional ideas of freedom and order are reflected in the laws of melody and harmony; how such knotty issues as the nature of time and the continuity of experience are stated and restated by composers and performing musicians with infinite variation and subtlety of meaning. And there are provocative contentions, that music is in fact a representational art, based like painting and sculpture on the imagery of actual experience: 'an image of what it is like for human beings to be alive'. For Maconie musical repertoire of every kind amounts to a vast resource of social, psychological, and linguistic data still awaiting proper interpretation.

Contents:

1 Communication 1

2 The Pleasure of Hearing 10

3 Looking and Listening 20

4 Sound Vibrations 30

5 Attraction 39

6 Sounds like Reality 47

7 Orchestra 57

8 Time 66

9 Space 75

10 Belief Systems 84

11 Scales 93

12 Melody, Harmony, Tonality 103

13 Notation 113

14 Ornamentation 122

15 Instruments 132

16 Sharps and Flats 140

17 Enclosures 149

18 Palladio 158

19 Dissonance 167

20 Applause 175.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0198162154

OCLC:

21910898