The book of music and nature [electronic resource] : an anthology of sounds, words, thoughts / edited by David Rothenberg & Marta Ulvaeus.

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Material type: Text

TextSeries: Publication details: Middletown, Conn. : Wesleyan University Press, 2009. 2013) 2015)Edition: 2nd edDescription: 1 online resource (1 electronic text (ix, 260 p.) :) ill., digital fileISBN:

9780819573902

Uniform titles:

Terra nova (Cambridge, Mass.)

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Genre/Form:

Additional physical formats: Print version:: No titleDDC classification:

781.1/7 21

LOC classification:

ML3845 .B614 2009

Online resources:

Full text available:

Contents:

Introduction : Does nature understand music? / David Rothenberg -- The music of the spheres / Hazrat Inayat Khan -- Primal sound / Rainer Maria Rilke -- Happy new ears / John Cage -- Diary : Emma Lake Music Workshop 1965 / John Cage -- An interview with Pierre Schaeffer / Tim Hodgkinson -- Deus ex machina / Evan Eisenberg -- Music and the soundscape / R. Murray Schafer -- The music of the earth / Tsai Chih Chung -- From The bear comes home / Rafi Zabor -- Sax can moo ... / Steve Lacy -- From Piano pieces / Russell Sherman -- Music, nature, and computers : a showdown / Jaron Lanier --Nature, sound art, and the sacred / David Dunn -- My one conversation with Collin Walcott / David James Duncan -- From Coming through slaughter / Michael Ondaatje -- From Rubicon beach / Steve Erickson -- The Sharawadji effect / Claude Schryer -- Sonic images / Pauline Oliveros -- The poetics of environmental sound / Pauline Oliveros -- Ambient music / Brian Eno -- Speaking from inside the soundscape / Hildegard Westerkamp -- Toothwalkers / Douglas Quin -- Blind listening / Francisco López -- From Exotica / David Toop -- From Brother of sleep / Robert Schneider -- The place where you go to listen / John Luther Adams -- Nature and music / Toru Takemitsu -- Lift-up-over sounding / Steven Feld -- Sweet singer of the pine barrens / Eric Salzman -- Where the sounds live / Bernie Krause -- From "A portrait of Shunkin" / Junichiro Tanizaki.

Abstract: Some say music is the universal language. This couldn't possibly be true. Not everyone speaks it; not all understand it. And even those who do cannot explain what it says. No one knows how music speaks, what tales it tells, how it tugs at our emotions with its mixture of tones, one after another, above and below. You can be moved by music and have absolutely no idea what is going on. Language is not like that. You must be able to speak a language to know what is being said. Music is only in part a language, that part you understand when you learn its rules and how to bend those rules. But the rest of it may move us even though we are unable to explain why. Nature is one such place. It can mean the place we came from, some original home where, as Nalungiaq the Netsilik Eskimo reminds us, "people and animals spoke the same language." Not only have we lost that language, we can barely imagine what it might be. Words are not the way to talk to animals. They'd rather sing with us--if we learn their tunes without making them conform to ours. Music could be a model for learning to perceive the surrounding world by listening, not only by naming or explaining.

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Includes index.

Issued as part of UPCC book collections on Project MUSE.

"A Terra nova book."

Based on special issue of Terra nova (summer 1997, vol. 2, no. 3).

Some say music is the universal language. This couldn't possibly be true. Not everyone speaks it; not all understand it. And even those who do cannot explain what it says. No one knows how music speaks, what tales it tells, how it tugs at our emotions with its mixture of tones, one after another, above and below. You can be moved by music and have absolutely no idea what is going on. Language is not like that. You must be able to speak a language to know what is being said. Music is only in part a language, that part you understand when you learn its rules and how to bend those rules. But the rest of it may move us even though we are unable to explain why. Nature is one such place. It can mean the place we came from, some original home where, as Nalungiaq the Netsilik Eskimo reminds us, "people and animals spoke the same language." Not only have we lost that language, we can barely imagine what it might be. Words are not the way to talk to animals. They'd rather sing with us--if we learn their tunes without making them conform to ours. Music could be a model for learning to perceive the surrounding world by listening, not only by naming or explaining.

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