The book of music and nature : an anthology of sounds, words, thoughts / edited by David Rothenberg & Marta Ulvaeus.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Rothenberg, David, 1962- editor.

Ulvaeus, Marta, editor.

Series:

Music/culture.

Music/culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Music--Philosophy and aesthetics.

Music.

Environment (Aesthetics).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (273 p.)

Edition:

Second edition.

Place of Publication:

Middletown, CT : Wesleyan University Press, 2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Some say music is the universal language. This couldn't possibly be true. Not everyone speaks it; not all understand it. And even those who do cannot explain what it says. No one knows how music speaks, what tales it tells, how it tugs at our emotions with its mixture of tones, one after another, above and below. You can be moved by music and have absolutely no idea what is going on. Language is not like that. You must be able to speak a language to know what is being said. Music is only in part a language, that part you understand when you learn its rules and how to bend those rules. But the rest of it may move us even though we are unable to explain why. Nature is one such place. It can mean the place we came from, some original home where, as Nalungiaq the Netsilik Eskimo reminds us, "people and animals spoke the same language." Not only have we lost that language, we can barely imagine what it might be. Words are not the way to talk to animals. They'd rather sing with us--if we learn their tunes without making them conform to ours. Music could be a model for learning to perceive the surrounding world by listening, not only by naming or explaining.

Contents:

Introduction : Does nature understand music? / David Rothenberg

The music of the spheres / Hazrat Inayat Khan

Primal sound / Rainer Maria Rilke

Happy new ears / John Cage

Diary : Emma Lake Music Workshop 1965 / John Cage

An interview with Pierre Schaeffer / Tim Hodgkinson

Deus ex machina / Evan Eisenberg

Music and the soundscape / R. Murray Schafer

The music of the earth / Tsai Chih Chung

From The bear comes home / Rafi Zabor

Sax can moo ... / Steve Lacy

From Piano pieces / Russell Sherman

Music, nature, and computers : a showdown / Jaron Lanier

Nature, sound art, and the sacred / David Dunn

My one conversation with Collin Walcott / David James Duncan

From Coming through slaughter / Michael Ondaatje

From Rubicon beach / Steve Erickson

The Sharawadji effect / Claude Schryer

Sonic images / Pauline Oliveros

The poetics of environmental sound / Pauline Oliveros

Ambient music / Brian Eno

Speaking from inside the soundscape / Hildegard Westerkamp

Toothwalkers / Douglas Quin

Blind listening / Francisco López

From Exotica / David Toop

From Brother of sleep / Robert Schneider

The place where you go to listen / John Luther Adams

Nature and music / Toru Takemitsu

Lift-up-over sounding / Steven Feld

Sweet singer of the pine barrens / Eric Salzman

Where the sounds live / Bernie Krause

From "A portrait of Shunkin" / Junichiro Tanizaki.

Notes:

Includes index.

"A Terra nova book."

Based on special issue of Terra nova (summer 1997, vol. 2, no. 3).

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-8195-7496-1

0-8195-7390-6

OCLC:

863821576