- Bib ID:
- 3664875
- Format:
- Book and Microform
- Author:
- Sun, Cecilia Jian-Xuan
- Description:
- 230 p.
- ISBN:
- 0496157922
- Summary:
-
The motley jumble of styles, aesthetics, and techniques now subsumed under the adjective "experimental" poses severe challenges to critics: what meaning can we find in a repertoire that seems designed to confound traditional musicological tools? What can we say about a piece that is supposed to be...simply what it is? In this dissertation, I answer this challenge by directing the focus of study away from musical objects---written scores---to the activity of music making---performance. Using La Monte Young's Composition 1960 #7 (1960) as a test case, the introductory chapter sets out the theoretical and historical framework that allows me to center my study on performance.
Each succeeding chapter analyzes the performance and recording history of key experimental works: Brian Eno's Ambient I: Music for Airports (1979)---the first ambient piece; Gavin Bryars' Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet (1971)---the piece that made Bryars famous; and Terry Riley's In C (1964)---the piece that founded pulse Minimalism. I examine details of interpretation-tempo, instrumentation, timbre, etc.---in conjunction with the performers' and composers' own rhetoric in the marketing and positioning of these pieces. Through studying a series of recordings from the Sixties to today, I detect a noticeable trend of imposing increasing control on what was once prized for being a wild and eccentric style.
My observations confirm a gradual detente reached between established musical institutions and the repertoire that had once mocked them. Taken as a whole, the dissertation outlines a history of performance that is continually attempting to shape and re-shape the legacy of Experimental Music.
- Notes:
-
- (UnM)AAI3155029
- Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 65-11, Section: A, page: 4045.
- Chair: Robert Fink.
- Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Los Angeles, 2004.
- Reproduction:
- Microfiche. Ann Arbor, Mich. : University Microfilms International.
- Subject:
- Music
- Other authors/contributors:
- University of California, Los Angeles
- Copyright:
-
In Copyright
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Copyright status was determined using the following information:
- Material type:
- Literary Dramatic Musical
- Published status:
- Unpublished
- Creation date:
- 2004
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