Instruments for New Music: Sound, Technology, and Modernism

Thomas Patteson

Open Access Published by University of California Press 2015

Instruments for New Music

Sound, Technology, and Modernism

Thomas Patteson

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780520963122

Overview
Contents

About this book

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s new open access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

Player pianos, radio-electric circuits, gramophone records, and optical sound film—these were the cutting-edge acoustic technologies of the early twentieth century, and for many musicians and artists of the time, these devices were also the implements of a musical revolution. Instruments for New Music traces a diffuse network of cultural agents who shared the belief that a truly modern music could be attained only through a radical challenge to the technological foundations of the art. Centered in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, the movement to create new instruments encompassed a broad spectrum of experiments, from the exploration of microtonal tunings and exotic tone colors to the ability to compose directly for automatic musical machines. This movement comprised composers, inventors, and visual artists, including Paul Hindemith, Ernst Toch, Jörg Mager, Friedrich Trautwein, László Moholy-Nagy, Walter Ruttmann, and Oskar Fischinger. Patteson’s fascinating study combines an artifact-oriented history of new music in the early twentieth century with an astute revisiting of still-relevant debates about the relationship between technology and the arts.

Author / Editor information

Patteson Thomas :

Thomas Patteson is Professor of Music History at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He is also Associate Curator for Bowerbird, a performing organization that presents contemporary music, film, and dance.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
1. Listening to Instruments Open Access Download PDF	1
2. “The Joy of Precision”: Mechanical Instruments and the Aesthetics of Automation Open Access Download PDF	18
3. “The Alchemy of Tone”: Jörg Mager and Electric Music Open Access Download PDF	52
4. “Sonic Handwriting”: Media Instruments and Musical Inscription Open Access Download PDF	82
5. “A New, Perfect Musical Instrument”: The Trautonium and Electric Music in the 1930s Open Access Download PDF	114
6. The Expanding Instrumentarium Open Access Download PDF	152
Notes Open Access Download PDF	169
Bibliography Open Access Download PDF	209
Index Open Access Download PDF	229

Language: English
Publisher: University of California Press
Pages
- Main content: 250

eBook

Published: November 11, 2015
ISBN: 9780520963122