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From prehistoric bone flutes to pipe organs to digital synthesizers, instruments have been important to musical cultures around the world. Yet, how do instruments affect musical organization? And how might they influence players' bodies and minds? Music at Hand explores these questions with a distinctive blend of music theory, psychology, and philosophy. Practicing an instrument, of course, builds bodily habits and skills. But it also develops connections between auditory and motor regions in a player's brain. These multi-sensory links are grounded in particular instrumental interfaces. They reflect the ways that an instrument converts action into sound, and the ways that it coordinates physical and tonal space. Ultimately, these connections can shape listening, improvisation, or composition. This means that pianos, guitars, horns, and bells are not simply tools for making notes. Such technologies, as creative prostheses, also open up possibilities for musical action, perception, and cognition. Throughout the book, author Jonathan De Souza examines diverse musical case studies-from Beethoven to blues harmonica, from Bach to electronic music-introducing novel methods for the analysis of body-instrument interaction. A companion website supports these analytical discussions with audiovisual examples, including motion-capture videos and performances by the author. Written in lucid prose, Music at Hand offers substantive insights for music scholars, while remaining accessible to non-specialist readers. This wide-ranging book will engage music theorists and historians, ethnomusicologists, organologists, composers, and performers-but also psychologists, philosophers, media theorists, and anyone who is curious about how musical experience is embodied and conditioned by technology.
List of contents
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- About the Companion Website
- 1. Beethoven's Prosthesis
- 2. Sounding Actions
- 3. Idiomaticity; or, Three Ways to Play Harmonica
- 4. Voluntary Self-Sabotage
- 5. Compositional Instruments
- 6. Horns To Be Heard
- References
- Index
About the author
Jonathan De Souza is an assistant professor in the Don Wright Faculty of Music at the University of Western Ontario. He holds a Ph.D. in music theory and history from the University of Chicago. De Souza is also an active multi-instrumentalist, playing classical music, folk music, and jazz.
Summary
Music at Hand shows how sound, action, and perception are connected in instrumental performance, asking how this integration affects listening, improvisation, and composition. Traversing disciplinary boundaries and diverse musical styles, this innovative book analyzes forms of musical experience that are both embodied and conditioned by technology.
Additional text
De Souza's eye-, ear-, and finger-opening Music at Hand shows us the way into this world of human-machine interdependency. Once we have absorbed its many fruitful lessons, there will be not the faintest whiff of paradox when we declare that we hear with our hands.
