This thesis examines the relationship of the ‘approved’ avant-garde culture to the ‘outsider’ culture of experimentalism. This relationship exhibits some parallels to the idea of cultural hegemony articulated by Edward Said in Orientalism and is informed by four basic aesthetic principles. These principles can be found in the work of Corneli…[Read more]

On June 17, 2018, the Aquarius, a boat carrying refugees, docked in Valencia. The wave of solidarity that ran through the city and neighboring towns in response to this arrival was intermingled with ignorance of a phenomenon—migration across the Mediterranean Sea—that has been a historical constant, and which indexes both the aspirations and fea…[Read more]

Call for papers for the II Historical Soundscapes Meeting – Évora 2019, that will take place at the University of Évora, October 16th-18th, 2019. The meeting is organized by the FCT research project PASEV – Patrimonialization of Évora’s Soundscape (1540-1910) (ref ALT20-03-0145-FEDER-028584 • LISBOA-01-0145-FEDER-028584). Further information and…[Read more]

Finite Element Analyses (FEA) was used to predict the resonant modes of the Tsar Kolokol, a 200-ton fractured bell that sits outside the Kremlin in Moscow. Frequency and displacement data informed a physical model implemented in the Faust programming language (Functional Audio Stream). The authors hosted a concert for Tsar bell and carillon with…[Read more]

In this chapter I discuss how contests about religious language have revolved around a contrast between, on the one hand, a preference for literalism, with its emphasis on reference and denotation; and on the other hand, a valuation of the poetic functions of language and its material properties. Turning to the issue of electronically mediated…[Read more]

Shipibo indigenous people perform a sophisticated array of vocal musical genres, including short ‘laughing songs’ called osanti. These song-jokes make fun of certain non-humans, mostly animals. They are by definition sung from within the non-humans’ perspective. Osanti are only performed by trained specialists in indigenous medicine and sorce…[Read more]

Shipibo indigenous people perform a sophisticated array of vocal musical genres, including short ‘laughing songs’ called osanti. These song-jokes make fun of certain non-humans, mostly animals. They are by definition sung from within the non-humans’ perspective. Osanti are only performed by trained specialists in indigenous medicine and sorce…[Read more]

This bibliography presents selected sources (mostly in English) at the intersection of music and architecture. Many of the sources approach the relationship between the practices through multiple case studies. Several books focused on particular artists in both disciplines have been included not because those artists are central to the study of…[Read more]

This paper explores the role of mobile telecommunication and technology firms (MTTs) in the distribution of recorded music in Ghana and Kenya. These countries both have vibrant music markets with weak formal distribution networks. Limited enforcement of copyright regimes and weak market regulation created new entrepreneurial business models. While…[Read more]

An essay written for the catalog for the exhibition, “Benga: Kenyan Kaleidoscope” (Bureau Sepän). Originally written in English; French translation by Gabriella Seemann.

Abstract from the catalog:
Se référant à une performance musicale à laquelle il a assisté et impliquant l’un des musiciens les plus en vue du Kenya, Dan Aceda, dans cet ess…[Read more]

Dante Alighieri’s Inferno (1314) portrays Hell as an alienated realm, in which the doomed spirits must spend eternity in isolation and regret. Franz Liszt’s two-movement Dante Symphony (1857), based on the Inferno and Purgatorio, gives musical form to Dante’s textual expressions of agony. These evocations of suffering are enhanced by Lisz…[Read more]

Contemporary developments in the medium of the moving picture, particularly in relation to the general digitisation of media, are bringing about substantial changes to long-held conceptions of both its theory and its practice. This thesis asserts that a significant factor in these, both historically and in terms of potential development, is the…[Read more]

Preface to Guy Beiner, Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster (Oxford University Press, 2018)

What were the sounds of war in the early modern period? What were the sounds of peace? The period between 1570 and 1750—roughly coincident with the cultural era known in Western contexts as “the Baroque”—was characterized by almost continual conflict in Europe. Whether caught up in the French Wars of Religion, the English Civil War, the Thirty…[Read more]

For some years I have been meaning to upload some of the material I have gathered over the years, including interviews I conducted with experimental composers and performers. One of the most useful, clearest interviews was my interview with Michael Nyman, 23 March 1983, just a few days after I had seen him in Hammersmith with the eponymous Michael…[Read more]

In 1972–3, the American composer Barney Childs began work on a book of interviews with modern composers. Unfortunately, Childs could not find a publisher for the book and abandoned the project. The interviews have remained, unpublished and almost unseen, for over forty years. This paper will introduce Childs’ interview with Wolff in June 1972. H…[Read more]

This collection of essays represents the first international survey of minimalism and postminimalist music from a wide variety of analytical and historical perspectives; its authors include the central scholars in this area. This chapter is the first comprehensive study of the wide variety of minimalist styles in Britain, from the sparse,…[Read more]

In this paper we attempt the beginning of a critical study of Amir Khusrau’s contributions to Indian music. A very important book Hazrat Amīr Khusro kā ‘ilm-e-musīqī (The Music of Amir Khusrau), by Rashid Malik, exists in Urdu, which deals extensively with this subject. Unfortunately it is still unavailable in English. This paper draws heavily…[Read more]

In this article we propose to reignite a debate regarding the origin shawm (śahnāī or surnā) that had been started by Nazir Jairazbhoy in 1970 , and taken up by him again in 1980, in response to interesting suggestions by Deva and Dick.

The intense changes that transformed Lisbon’s urban fabric between 1864 and 1908 were a key agent in reshaping the political economy of sound in the city.1 During the second half of the nineteenth century, Lisbon was getting to grips with modernity in a period when not only was the term ‘modern’ starting to be seen in a positive light, but moder…[Read more]