Treatise on musical objects : an essay across disciplines / Pierre Schaeffer ; translated by Christine North and John Dack.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schaeffer, Pierre, 1910-1995, author.

Contributor:

North, Christine, translator.

Dack, John, translator.

Series:

California studies in 20th-century music ; 20.

California studies in 20th-century music ; 20

Standardized Title:

Traité des objets musicaux. English

Language:

English

French

Subjects (All):

Music--Philosophy and aesthetics.

Music.

Physical Description:

xli, 569 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2017]

Summary:

"The Treatise on musical objects by Pierre Schaeffer is regarded as his most important work on music and its relationship with technology. Schaeffer refers to his earlier research in musique concrète and expands this to suggest a methodology of working with sounds resulting from the recording process. Drawing on acoustics, physics, and physiology, but also philosophy and the relationship between subject and object, Schaeffer's book summarizes his theoretical and practical work in music composition. North and Dack present an important book in the history of ideas in Europe that will resonate far beyond electroacoustic music."--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Book one. Making music. The instrumental prerequisite ; Playing an instrument ; Capturing sounds ; Acousmatics

Book two. Hearing. "What can be heard" ; The four listening modes ; Scientific prejudice ; The hearing intention

Book three. Correlations between the physical signal and the musical object. Ambiguities in musical acoustics ; Correlation between spectra and pitches ; Thresholds and transients ; Temporal anamorphoses I: timbres and dynamics ; Temporal anamorphoses II: timbre and instrument ; Time and duration

Book four. Objects and structures. Reduction to the object ; Perceptual structures ; Comparative structures: music and language ; The conventional musical system: musicality and sonority ; Natural sound structures: musicianly listening ; The reduced listening system: musical dualism ; Musical research ; Morphology of sound objects ; The laboratory ; Typology of musical objects (I): classification criteria ; Typology (II): balanced and redundant objects ; Typology (III): eccentric sounds ; Working at our instrument

Book six. Theory of musical objects. Musical experience ; Generalising music theory ; Theory of homogeneous sounds: criterion of mass ; Theory of fixed masses: dynamic criterion ; Theory of sustainment ; Theory of variations ; Analysis of the musical object as it generally appears ; Implementation ; The meaning of music

Penultimate chapter : in search of music itself

Post-script.

Notes:

Translated from the French.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Schaeffer, Pierre, 1910-1995. Treatise on musical objects.

ISBN:

9780520294301

9780520294295

0520294297

0520294300

OCLC:

961309966

Publisher Number:

99973232758