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A celebrated figure in myth, song, and story, the nightingale has captivated the imagination for millennia, its complex song evoking a prism of human emotions,-from melancholy to joy, from the fear of death to the immortality of art. As philosopher and musician David Rothenberg shows in this searching and personal new book, the nightingale's song is so peculiar in part(...)
Nightingales in Berlin: searching for the perfect sound
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A celebrated figure in myth, song, and story, the nightingale has captivated the imagination for millennia, its complex song evoking a prism of human emotions,-from melancholy to joy, from the fear of death to the immortality of art. As philosopher and musician David Rothenberg shows in this searching and personal new book, the nightingale's song is so peculiar in part because it reflects our own cacophony back at us. As vocal learners, nightingales acquire their music through the world around them, singing amidst the sounds of humanity in all its contradictions of noise and beauty, hard machinery and soft melody. Rather than try to capture a sound not made for us to understand, Rothenberg seeks these musical creatures out, clarinet in tow, and makes a new sound with them. He takes us to the urban landscape of Berlin—longtime home to nightingale colonies where the birds sing ever louder in order to be heard—and invites us to listen in on their remarkable collaboration as birds and instruments riff off of each other's sounds. Through dialogue, travel records, sonograms, tours of Berlin's city parks, and musings on the place animal music occupies in our collective imagination, Rothenberg takes us on a quest for a new sonic alchemy, a music impossible for any one species to make alone.
Landscape Theory
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Written in his characteristic "mesostics" (linked lines of prose poetry), Composition in Retrospect is a statement of methodology in which composer John Cage examines the central issues of his work: Indeterminacy, nonunderstanding, inconsistency, imitation, variable structure, contingency. Finished only shortly before his death in 1992, Composition in Retrospect completes(...)
John Cage composition in retrospect
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Written in his characteristic "mesostics" (linked lines of prose poetry), Composition in Retrospect is a statement of methodology in which composer John Cage examines the central issues of his work: Indeterminacy, nonunderstanding, inconsistency, imitation, variable structure, contingency. Finished only shortly before his death in 1992, Composition in Retrospect completes the documentation of Cage's thought that began with his classic book Silence (1961), but it is an introduction and invitation to his work as much as a summary or conclusion. Also included in this volume (at Cage's request) is "Themes and Variations," a piece written in 1982 about friends and heroes such as Jasper Johns, Buckminster Fuller, Marcel Duchamp and Erik Satie. Together these pieces form a book that is both a testament to the artists Cage admired and a clear statement of his own ars poetica. John Cage (1912-1992) was an American composer, writer, artist and mycologist. Having studied with Arnold Schonberg (who proclaimed him "not a composer, but an inventor-of genius") and Henry Cowell in the 30s, Cage went on to devise landmark compositions for percussion and prepared piano before making his hugely influential work 4'33" (1952). Later works privileged composition by chance procedure--"imitating Nature in the manner of her operation"--and the use of ambient noise, electronics and tape manipulation. Cage's influence can be seen in the works of countless composers (especially the New York School "group" of Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff and Earle Brown), artists (such as those affiliated with Fluxus) and writers.
Contemporary Art Monographs