Most previous writings on musical exoticism reflect the unspoken assumption that a work is perceived by the listener as exotic only if it incorporates distinctively foreign or otherwise highly unusual elements of musical style. This “Exotic Style Only” Paradigm often proves revelatory, especially for purely instrumental works. In operas and oth…[Read more]

Most previous writings on musical exoticism reflect the unspoken assumption that a work is perceived by the listener as exotic only if it incorporates distinctively foreign or otherwise highly unusual elements of musical style. This “Exotic Style Only” Paradigm often proves revelatory, especially for purely instrumental works. In operas and oth…[Read more]

My sonic work “City Noise” proposes both an artistic and a theoretical approach to the city-sound relationship. The default assumption about this relationship is that sounds reflect a one-to-one relationship between soundscape and landscape, both drawing upon and revealing the physical and social landscapes from which they originate. However, the…[Read more]

My sonic work “City Noise” proposes both an artistic and a theoretical approach to the city-sound relationship. The default assumption about this relationship is that sounds reflect a one-to-one relationship between soundscape and landscape, both drawing upon and revealing the physical and social landscapes from which they originate. However, the…[Read more]

Illustration as part of art works has often been considered a form of low art, but as it has progressively become more developed, it has established a decent place in the art community. Through this paper, the authors have tried to apply a primarily participatory research method, including participant observation, deep interview, and literature…[Read more]

Illustration as part of art works has often been considered a form of low art, but as it has progressively become more developed, it has established a decent place in the art community. Through this paper, the authors have tried to apply a primarily participatory research method, including participant observation, deep interview, and literature…[Read more]

An introduction to music appreciation and history that emphasizes the political, cultural, and social influences on music from antiquity to the 20th century. Contents include sacred and secular, vocal and instrumental, and folk and art music from across the Western world, including modern popular song. No previous musical experience necessary. All…[Read more]

In The Burns Antiphoner – From manuscript to interactive resource, Anna Kijas reports on a new project based around a 14th-century source, the Burns Antiphoner. In this project they focus on integrating and delivering images, metadata, and recorded audio and video to provide an in-depth look at the contents and experience of this particular s…[Read more]

In 1984 I published a chapter on the art song, simply entitled “Song,” in my first book, Music and Poetry: The Nineteenth Century and After (University of California Press). The chapter aimed to replace the traditional understanding of song as a harmonious fusion of words and music. The chapter has had a fortunate reception, but as time has run…[Read more]

A short article reflecting on the relationship of Schubert’s songs to the culture of modernity, with reference to the author’s 1985 article “The Schubert Lied.” Includes an account of the song “Wanderers Nachtled.”

Two Pietàs in different media, the first by French painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905) and the second by Swedish composer Lisa Streich (1985-), permit an examination of the Pietà trope itself by laying open a range of its symbolic aspects. Bouguereau’s Pietà (1876) is discussed in terms of the grief and joy that are both presen…[Read more]

In April 2010, the Guildhall School of Music recognized German composer Helmut Lachenmann’s expertise in extended instrumental techniques, inviting him to give the keynote speech at a research day dedicated to contemporary performance practice; in May, he had a Fellowship of the Royal College of Music conferred upon him for his achievements as a…[Read more]

Recent opera repertoire has seen a wide variety of styles in opera composition. Marco Polo represents a rather unique corner of this wide variety. Tan Dun explores a capacious array of influences in this work. Starting from his own roots, Chinese traditional music, he explores European art tradition to some extent. Tan Dun also touches the styles…[Read more]

Death doom metal or death/doom emerges as a distinct style in early 1990s mostly focused in northern England. This style or, tentatively, sub-genre of doom may be argued to be a leisure space for participants in this culture. Dark leisure theory attempts to describe non-mainstream leisure activity, and even though it started in criminological and…[Read more]

In the post-modern era, the domination of repetition in aesthetics allows for deeper meaning to be conveyed with limited musical material. The repetition, within Sigmund Freud’s interpretation in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), becomes a ‘repetition-compulsion’ that resonates beyond the aural recurrences. Obsession inherent in depre…[Read more]

Doom (metal) has been seen as the ‘slower’ -in more than one sense- sibling in metal music in general. The slowness can be argued to be true for some cases within doom and this slowness, prominently in musical terms but alongside other angles, can be the defining factor of a portion of doom music. For example, while funeral doom may be argued to…[Read more]

Doom metal music and culture have been under the influence of 1970s hippie ideologies from the beginning with the music of Black Sabbath. Tony Iommi in an interview from 2011 suggests that Black Sabbath has been using the label ‘doom’ since its early days. While during early stages of doom music, this influence or interaction took both tra…[Read more]

Melancholy, death, and the darker thought spectrum should not be considered separate from black metal at any point through its history. In contrast however, depressive suicidal black metal (DSBM) took these themes further in terms of their crudity, and more importantly it fixated on the ideas of death and suicide. The birth pangs of this style are…[Read more]

Death plays an important role in human life, and there have been many theories about how this inevitability affects human thought, and social life. According to anthropological studies, death and death-related phenomena, including rituals, music, the meaning of death, are based on the originating cultures. This makes depressive suicidal black…[Read more]