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Recordings are now the primary way we hear classical music, especially the more abstract styles of “absolute” instrumental music. In this original, provocative book, Arved Ashby argues that recording technology has transformed our understanding of art music. Contesting the laments of nostalgic critics, Ashby sees recordings as socially progressive and instruments of a musical vernacular, but also finds that recording and absolute music actually involve similar notions of removing sound from context. He takes stock of technology's impact on classical music, addressing the questions at the heart of the issue. This erudite yet concise study reveals how mechanical reproduction has transformed classical musical culture and the very act of listening, breaking down aesthetic and generational barriers and mixing classical music into the soundtrack of everyday life.

iFor a concise edition of his legendary arts dictionary of information and opinion, the distinguished critic and arts historian Richard Kostelanetz selects entries from the 2018 third edition. Typically he provides intelligence unavailable anywhere else, no less in print than online, about a wealth of subjects and individuals. Focused upon what is truly innovative and excellent, Kostelanetz also ranges widely with insight and surprise, including appreciations of artistic athletes such as Muhammad Ali and the Harlem Globetrotters and such collective creations as Las Vegas and his native New York City. Continuing the traditions of cheeky high-style Dictionarysts, honoring Ambrose Bierce and Samuel Johnson (both with individual entries), Kostelanetz offers a \"reference book\" to be enjoyed, not only in bits and chunks but continuously as one of the ten books someone would take if he or she planned to be stranded on a desert isle.

‘Simon Emmerson’s book provides an important new perspective on key aspects of the electroacoustic medium which hitherto have not received the attention they deserve. The product of meticulous and probing research, this critical account is both insightful and thought-provoking, not least in terms of the deeply informed discussion of key works within this rich and ever-growing legacy and the often overlooked issues of performance practice associated with their dissemination. It fills an important gap in the literature, successfully communicating both to the more specialist reader and also those new to this distinctive and significant medium of creativity’ – Professor Peter Manning, Head of Department and Director of CETL, Department of Music, Durham University ‘Simon Emmerson’s new book is a superb exploration of how we perceive and understand today’s technology-based music. He draws a historical line pointing out that music has evolved from the obvious efforts of people playing mechanical instruments to music that seems to happen without human effort. He then explores the ways in which we understand this new musical universe, populated by sounds that are produced by technology and seem to simply happen with no apparent cause. He discusses the relationships of these sounds to the real world, our perception of the new musical space in which these sounds exist; and our understandings of this new music through real-life ‘models’. Illuminating and insightful, this book is clearly the result of years of creativity and reflection and it will lead a reader to new depths of understanding of the musical revolution that is happening around us.’ – Joel Chadabe, President, Electronic Music Foundation and Professor Emeritus, State University of New York at Albany Drawing on recent ideas that explore new environments and the changing situations of composition and performance, Simon Emmerson provides a significant contribution to the study of contemporary music, bridging history, aesthetics and the ideas behind evolving performance practices. Whether created in a studio or performed on stage, how does electronic music reflect what is live and living? What is it to perform ‘live’ in the age of the laptop? Many performer-composers draw upon a library’ of materials, some created beforehand in a studio, some coded ‘on the fly’, others ‘plundered’ from the widest possible range of sources. But others refuse to abandon traditionally ‘created and structured’ electroacoustic work. Lying behind this maelstrom of activity is the perennial relationship to ‘theory’, that is, ideas, principles and practices that somehow lie behind composers’ and performers’ actions. Some composers claim they just ‘respond’ to sound and compose ‘with their ears’, while others use models and analogies of previously ‘non-musical’ processes. It is evident that in such new musical practices the human body has a new relationship to the sound. There is a historical dimension to this, for since the earliest electroacoustic experiments in 1948 the body has been celebrated or sublimated in a strange ‘dance’ of forces in which it has never quite gone away but rarely been overtly present. The relationship of the body performing to the spaces around has also undergone a revolution as the source of sound production has shifted to the loudspeaker. Emmerson considers these issues in the framework of our increasingly ‘acousmatic’ world in which we cannot see the source of the sounds we hear.

iFor this American edition of his legendary arts dictionary of information and opinion, the distinguished critic and arts historian Richard Kostelanetz has selected from the fuller third edition his entries on North Americans, including Canadians, Mexicans, and resident immigrants. Typically, he provides intelligence unavailable anywhere else, no less in print than online, about a wealth of subjects and individuals. Focused upon what is truly innovative and excellent, Kostelanetz also ranges widely with insight and surprise, including appreciations of artistic athletes such as Muhammad Ali and the Harlem Globetrotters, and such collective creations as Las Vegas and his native New York City. Continuing the traditions of cheeky high-style Dictionarysts, honoring Ambrose Bierce and Nicolas Slonimsky (both with individual entries), Kostelanetz offers a “reference book” to be treasured not only in bits and chunks, but continuously as one of the ten books someone would take if they planned to be stranded on a desert isle.

The music industry's ongoing battle against digital piracy is just the latest skirmish in a long conflict over who has the right to distribute music. Starting with music publishers' efforts to stamp out bootleg compilations of lyric sheets in 1929, Barry Kernfeld's Pop Song Piracy details nearly a century of disobedient music distribution from song sheets to MP3s. In the 1940s and '50s, Kernfeld reveals, song sheets were succeeded by fake books, unofficial volumes of melodies and lyrics for popular songs that were a key tool for musicians. Music publishers attempted to wipe out fake books, but after their efforts proved unsuccessful they published their own. Pop Song Piracy shows that this pattern of disobedience, prohibition, and assimilation recurred in each conflict over unauthorized music distribution, from European pirate radio stations to bootlegged live shows. Beneath this pattern, Kernfeld argues, there exists a complex give and take between distribution methods that merely copy existing songs (such as counterfeit CDs) and ones that transform songs into new products (such as file sharing). Ultimately, he contends, it was the music industry's persistent lagging behind in creating innovative products that led to the very piracy it sought to eliminate.

Serbian musicians who were collecting different forms of traditional music at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century were unable to make audio recordings of the collected material. This conditioned the need to transcribe folk melodies “by ear” during the very process of interviewing their interlocutors or later – from memory. Methodology of transformation of sound into an adequate graphic transcription was especially promoted by Vladimir Đorđević who, in comparison to his predecessors, introduced numerous novelties. This article discusses his approach to the transcription of vocal practices as applied in two large collections: Serbian Folk Melodies (Southern Serbia) and Serbian Folk Melodies (Pre-war Serbia). The fundaments of his work are observed through the analysis of the manner in which Đorđević transcribed meta-data, as well as from poetic and music texts.

Romantic virtuosity was all about the musician as the hero.14 The virtuoso was an individual with a larger-than-life stage presence who stood out from all other musicians.15 Traveling virtuosos such as Paganini and Liszt amazed audiences with technical fireworks16 and feats of improvisation, but as the competition increased, a new form of virtuosity emerged. Because the practice of performing from memory was rare, performers used it as a way to distinguish themselves. [...]the practice of performing from memory was by no means immediately and universally accepted. Because of the attention it brought to the musician, performing from memory could be a distraction, focusing the audience's attention on the performer and away from the music.

This article aims to contribute to the increasingly rich body of ethnographic and sociological studies that focus on processes of musical practice. After a brief introduction to the significance of music in social life, it outlines the advantages of adopting an actor-oriented analysis that gives close attention to issues of agency and emergent socio-cultural forms. This is followed by a brief encounter with the dynamics of musical performance as perceived by members of the Guarneri Quartet, after which two contrasting musical scenarios are analyzed in depth. The first focuses on music and ritual practices in the Peruvian Andes, and the second on the English musical renaissance of the early twentieth century. The article closes with a brief comment on the need to examine in depth the social components of musical composition and performance.