Robin Maconie – författare

Apart from providing an outlet for human emotions, does music have a use? Is a Mozart symphony intelligent, and is music a language? If so, what does it say and how does it say it? In this perceptive and revolutionary sequel to The Concept of Music, Robin Maconie teases out the musical science underlying subjects as diverse as Pythagoras's theorem, Plato's city state, mysteries of religion, myth, and folklore, theories of the mind, and key insights of Newton, Freud, and Wittgenstein. Western civilization is based on a foundation of universal laws derived from acoustics and hearing. Music is not only the product of that civilizing process but also the key to understanding the hidden structures and rituals of established belief. Beneath the surface of mass entertainment lie musical notations, images, instruments, and ensemble interactions to be understood afresh as models and mind games in an ongoing programme of scientfic discovery, information management, and social organization. That understanding is exciting in itself, has important educational and cultural implications, and is essential for future progress in musical composition.

In Musicologia—meaning "musical reasoning" as distinct from a mere love of music—author and composer Robin Maconie takes aim against the fashionable misconception that music is empty of meaning, or "auditory cheesecake." Fresh and penetrating insights draw attention to the influence of musical analogy in the history of science and philosophy from ancient Greece to modern times. Since music has always existed, it is an expression of human consciousness. The discoveries of Pythagoras, Zeno, Kepler, Newton, and Einstein would not have been possible without a tradition of musical acoustics. The story of Musicologia unfolds in thirty-one chapters from primordial considerations of silence, communication, selfhood, balance, and motion to focus on more recent and specific issues of chaos, order, relativity, and artificial intelligence, showing that even the most controversial aspects of modern art music form part of a wider endeavor to engage with universal propositions of science and philosophy.

Gertrude Stein and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead were unlikely friends who spent most of their mature lives in exile: Stein in France and Whitehead in the United States. Their friendship was based on a mutual admiration for the philosophical pragmatism of William James and skepticism toward the European tradition of intellectual abstraction extending as far back as Plato and Aristotle. Though neither was musical, both were leading exponents of a new orientation toward time and knowledge acquisition that would go on to influence succeeding generations of composers. Through Virgil Thomson, Stein came to influence John Cage and the New York school of abstract music; through his teaching in the United States, Whitehead’s philosophy of time and cognition came to be seen in America and abroad as an alternative to Newtonian neoclassicism, an alternative clearly acknowledged in the metric modulations of Elliott Carter and Conlon Nancarrow as well as the post-1950 total serialism of Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen.The seemingly unlikely influence of Stein and Whitehead on Thomson, Cage, Carter, and the minimalists tells a remarkable story of transmission within and among the arts and philosophy, one that Robin Maconie unravels through his series of essays in Avant Garde: An American Odyssey from Gertrude Stein to Pierre Boulez. Maconie explores, from Hollywood to Harvard, the way in which music functions as a form of communication across the boundaries of language, serving the causes of trade and diplomacy through its representation of national identity, emotional character, honorable intention, and social discipline. The study of music as a language inevitably became the object of information science after World War II, but, as Maconie notes, 60 years on, music’s refusal to yield to scientific elucidation has generated a stream of anti-music propaganda by a powerful collective of celebrity science writers. In a sequence of linked essays, Stockhausen specialist Robin Maconie reconsiders the role of music and music technology through careful examination of key modern concepts with respect to time, existence, identity, and relationship as formulated by such thinkers as Einstein, Russell, Whitehead, and Stein, along with Freud, Schoenberg, Wittgenstein, and Marcel Duchamp.This foray into art, music, science, and philosophy is ideally suited for students and scholars of these disciplines, as well as those seeking to understand more deeply the influence these individuals had on one another’s work and modern music.

Gertrude Stein and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead were unlikely friends who spent most of their mature lives in exile: Stein in France and Whitehead in the United States. Their friendship was based on a mutual admiration for the philosophical pragmatism of William James and skepticism toward the European tradition of intellectual abstraction extending as far back as Plato and Aristotle. Though neither was musical, both were leading exponents of a new orientation toward time and knowledge acquisition that would go on to influence succeeding generations of composers. Through Virgil Thomson, Stein came to influence John Cage and the New York school of abstract music; through his teaching in the United States, Whitehead’s philosophy of time and cognition came to be seen in America and abroad as an alternative to Newtonian neoclassicism, an alternative clearly acknowledged in the metric modulations of Elliott Carter and Conlon Nancarrow as well as the post-1950 total serialism of Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen.The seemingly unlikely influence of Stein and Whitehead on Thomson, Cage, Carter, and the minimalists tells a remarkable story of transmission within and among the arts and philosophy, one that Robin Maconie unravels through his series of essays in Avant Garde: An American Odyssey from Gertrude Stein to Pierre Boulez. Maconie explores, from Hollywood to Harvard, the way in which music functions as a form of communication across the boundaries of language, serving the causes of trade and diplomacy through its representation of national identity, emotional character, honorable intention, and social discipline. The study of music as a language inevitably became the object of information science after World War II, but, as Maconie notes, 60 years on, music’s refusal to yield to scientific elucidation has generated a stream of anti-music propaganda by a powerful collective of celebrity science writers. In a sequence of linked essays, Stockhausen specialist Robin Maconie reconsiders the role of music and music technology through careful examination of key modern concepts with respect to time, existence, identity, and relationship as formulated by such thinkers as Einstein, Russell, Whitehead, and Stein, along with Freud, Schoenberg, Wittgenstein, and Marcel Duchamp.This foray into art, music, science, and philosophy is ideally suited for students and scholars of these disciplines, as well as those seeking to understand more deeply the influence these individuals had on one another’s work and modern music.

Hear the name “Igor Stravinsky” and the first thing that comes to mind is a composer of ponderous, “serious” music. But did you know that Stravinsky lived much of his life in Hollywood? That he collaborated on musical projects with Pablo Picasso and George Balanchine? That his work subtly espoused deeply held political views and reflected key literary influences? That he was not only interested in the modern communication technologies of his time—sound recording, radio, television, even early computers—but wrote music that echoed their impact?In Experiencing Stravinsky, music historian Robin Maconie takes a fresh approach to understanding this great composer’s works, explaining what makes Stravinsky’s sound unique and what we, as listeners, need to know in order to appreciate the variety and brilliance of his compositions. Experiencing Stravinsky is more than just another work of music appreciation. In the author’s deft hands, Stravinsky’s long musical career is a guided tour through 20th-century history, from Czarist Russia and two world wars to the height of the Hollywood era and the birth of the information age. Maconie has provided nothing less than an operating manual to getting the most out of Stravinsky’s music.

Hear the name “Igor Stravinsky” and the first thing that comes to mind is a composer of ponderous, “serious” music. But did you know that Stravinsky lived much of his life in Hollywood? That he collaborated on musical projects with Pablo Picasso and George Balanchine? That his work subtly espoused deeply held political views and reflected key literary influences? That he was not only interested in the modern communication technologies of his time—sound recording, radio, television, even early computers—but wrote music that echoed their impact?In Experiencing Stravinsky, music historian Robin Maconie takes a fresh approach to understanding this great composer’s works, explaining what makes Stravinsky’s sound unique and what we, as listeners, need to know in order to appreciate the variety and brilliance of his compositions. Experiencing Stravinsky is more than just another work of music appreciation. In the author’s deft hands, Stravinsky’s long musical career is a guided tour through 20th-century history, from Czarist Russia and two world wars to the height of the Hollywood era and the birth of the information age. Maconie has provided nothing less than an operating manual to getting the most out of Stravinsky’s music.

This collection of essays addresses technical developments in telecommunications and sound recording that have guided the direction of musical aesthetics in the post-1950 era. Such information is readily available online but may appear counterintuitive to many who find its priorities difficult to grasp from a musical perspective. The author hopes to draw attention to the place of ideas of communication and flight in western tradition. This Element begins with Varèse and his ''noble noise'', traverses the arrival of Information Theory and its influence, examples of early computer music, and ends with a defence of the sublime logic of Stockhausen''s singing helicopters and tornados.

This collection of essays addresses technical developments in telecommunications and sound recording that have guided the direction of musical aesthetics in the post-1950 era. Such information is readily available online but may appear counterintuitive to many who find its priorities difficult to grasp from a musical perspective. The author hopes to draw attention to the place of ideas of communication and flight in western tradition. This Element begins with Varèse and his ''noble noise'', traverses the arrival of Information Theory and its influence, examples of early computer music, and ends with a defence of the sublime logic of Stockhausen''s singing helicopters and tornados.

This collection of essays addresses technical developments in telecommunications and sound recording that have guided the direction of musical aesthetics in the post-1950 era. Such information is readily available online but may appear counterintuitive to many who find its priorities difficult to grasp from a musical perspective. The author hopes to draw attention to the place of ideas of communication and flight in western tradition. This Element begins with Varèse and his 'noble noise', traverses the arrival of Information Theory and its influence, examples of early computer music, and ends with a defence of the sublime logic of Stockhausen's singing helicopters and tornados.

German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen was arguably the most influential figure of the European postwar avant-garde and unquestionably the most elusive and enigmatic musical thinker of a generation that includes Pierre Boulez, John Cage, and Luciano Berio. His radically new electronic and instrumental music converted Igor Stravinsky to serialism in the 1950s and has continued to inspire young composers for more than fifty years.Other Planets: The Complete Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen, 1950–2007 draws on more than fifty years of Maconie’s close study of Stockhausen and functions as a catalogue raisonee of Stockhausen’s complete output. With plentiful citations from the history of radio, film, and sound recording, as well as from contemporary science and technology, the book is laid out in chronological order and contains ample commentary on the composer’s sources of inspiration. Each composition is also fully documented within the text, giving full information of each work’s publisher, catalog number, instrumentation, duration, and authorized compact disc. The updated edition extends the range of the volume’s contents to include the twenty-five works Stockhausen composed between 2004 and his death in 2007.Stockhausen’s status in the history of music in the late twentieth century can now be appreciated with unprecedented clarity. All listeners will benefit from this work, and American music lovers in particular will find it an invaluable guide to the ongoing debate and rivalry over the sources of abstract expressionism and the avant-garde.

In Musicologia—meaning "musical reasoning" as distinct from a mere love of music—author and composer Robin Maconie takes aim against the fashionable misconception that music is empty of meaning, or "auditory cheesecake." Fresh and penetrating insights draw attention to the influence of musical analogy in the history of science and philosophy from ancient Greece to modern times. Since music has always existed, it is an expression of human consciousness. The discoveries of Pythagoras, Zeno, Kepler, Newton, and Einstein would not have been possible without a tradition of musical acoustics. The story of Musicologia unfolds in thirty-one chapters from primordial considerations of silence, communication, selfhood, balance, and motion to focus on more recent and specific issues of chaos, order, relativity, and artificial intelligence, showing that even the most controversial aspects of modern art music form part of a wider endeavor to engage with universal propositions of science and philosophy.

Here at last is a listener''s guide to the hidden meanings of western classical music, expressed in accessible, jargon-free language and drawing on universal listening experiences and skills. The Way of Music is six booklets in one volume; it is a study guide in attention training, listening skills, and music appreciation for students, teachers, and the general reader. Each book is complete in itself, to be read and used as part of a multilayered database of musical meaning. Alternating aphorism and explanation, Books 1 and 2 inquire into hearing and communication processes using the example of a barking dog, while Books 3 and 4 extend the range of inquiry into the acoustics and performance of ethnic and classical music. Book 5 offers a substantial survey of over 100 examples of recorded music, providing a history of western music and culture, and incorporating discussion and assignment topics. The final book presents the range of class, gender, and cultural perspectives found in 101 adult student responses to the slow movement of Beethoven''s Piano Concerto No. 4. Drawing on Robin Maconie''s earlier work, The Second Sense: Language Music and Hearing (2002), The Way of Music presents many of the same insights in highly encapsulated form for readers in the text message age, taking the discussion of classical music out of music departments and returning it to a broader public and educational arena.Student Observations:"You learn logic, reason, and a sort of sensitivity to the passage of time from listening to classical music.""Music, when one is trained to listen, helps to improve your senses. Your sense of hearing is heightened; you become more alert, because you are concentrating on many different instruments and sounds simultaneously.""Music reaches beyond the improvement of academic performance to a realm of improvement of the human condition."

In a visual culture, hearing is the second sense, and music is the art of hearing. Kandinsky believed that music transcended painting and visual representation because it had the power to act directly and invisibly on the human spirit. Because it is the only art to deal unequivocally with the real world of sound and its attendant perceptions of time, motion, and human mortality, music remains a powerful and often controversial influence on human behavior.Defining music in the broadest sense as ''any acoustic activity intended to influence the behavior of others'', and written in a clear, conversational style for a non-specialist readership, The Second Sense draws on over 100 examples of recorded musical sources from throat singing to Beethoven, and from traditional Japan to Boulez, including a great many popular classics. On the basis that ''Everything you hear is true: true of yourself, true of the music, and true of the relationship between what you hear and how you hear it'' the author teases out the signs, symbols, and patterns of thought that arise from the way people hear, the sounds people make, and the instruments and environments that are designed and constructed to enhance the listening experience. Maconie aims to do for music what Klee and Kandinsky did for art education and Marshall McLuhan for media studies.