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]

The anonymous “Le Sacrifice d’Abraham” performed before Francis I in Paris in 1539 has traditionally been treated–if at all–simply as a variant of an earlier play of the same name published as part of the 15th-century “Mistère du Viel Testament.” More recently, it has been suggested that the play anticipates the direction taken by Théodore de B…[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]

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]

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]

Théodore de Bèze (1519-1605), French Reformer and Professor at Lausanne and Geneva, wrote his only play, “Abraham sacrifiant,” in 1550. The only readily available English translation, by Arthur Golding, was published in 1577. The translation offered here, based on the text of the original edition reproduced by Donald Stone, Jr. in “Four R…[Read more]

Four lectures, condensed and sanitized, based on those given to undergraduate students embarking for the first time on the serious study of the history of Western theatre. Unembellished by references to student readings or ad hoc example, by elaborations in response to student questions, or by professorial attempts at humour, they make for…[Read more]

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]

Recently, international media outlets have celebrated São Paulo for its cosmopolitan musical output and its vibrant street art scenes. That discourse connected the city other generative periods in the histories of so-called “global cities,” such as New York of the 1970s. In those cities, the simultaneous developments of multiple creative scenes…[Read more]

Many music librarians participate in professional and amateur music making. We face similar performance practice/interpretive issues as do our music library users. This panel discussion focuses on application of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy to performance practice in experimental music. Four music librarians with significant…[Read more]

Many music librarians participate in professional and amateur music making. We face similar performance practice/interpretive issues as do our music library users. This panel discussion focuses on application of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy to performance practice in experimental music. Four music librarians with significant…[Read more]

Many music librarians participate in professional and amateur music making. We face similar performance practice/interpretive issues as do our music library users. This panel discussion focuses on application of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy to performance practice in experimental music. Four music librarians with significant…[Read more]

Sounding Islam provides a provocative account of the sonic dimensions of religion, combining perspectives from the anthropology of media and sound studies, as well as drawing on neo-phenomenological approaches to atmospheres. Using long-term ethnographic research on devotional Islam in Mauritius, Patrick Eisenlohr explores how the voice, as a site…[Read more]