The Composer's Black Box

Making Music in Cybernetic America
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-0-520-41018-3
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 7, 286 Seiten, Cloth Over Boards, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Reihe: California Studies in Music, Sound, and Media

Stories about new musical instruments are often told as quests for new kinds of sounds. The Composer's Black Box asks, What happens when new musical instruments produce not only new sounds but also new dynamics of musical agency and control? And what consequences do those new dynamics have for musicality beyond sound? With a focus on five key figures—Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, Donald Buchla, Alvin Lucier, and Sun Ra—this book explores how scientific and technological developments in mid-twentieth-century America galvanized musicians to reconfigure their conceptions of sociality, freedom, and the creative self. Theodore Gordon shows how cybernetic thinking in a range of disciplines, from experimental music to jazz and electrical engineering, has shaped musical techniques and technologies and changed what it means to be a composer—or, more broadly, a music-making human—in an increasingly informational world.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gordon, Theodore

Fachgebiete

• Technische Wissenschaften Sonstige Technologien | Angewandte Technik Akustik, Tontechnik
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Wissenssoziologie, Wissenschaftssoziologie, Techniksoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikinstrumente Elektronische Musikinstrumente
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikwissenschaft Allgemein Musiktheorie, Musikästhetik, Kompositionslehre
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikgattungen Elektronische Musik
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Geschichte der Musik

Über Autor(innen)

Theodore Gordon is Assistant Professor of Music at Baruch College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York.