Music and the Performing Arts in the Anthropocene - Nature, Materialities and Ecological Transformation

This book offers a series of thought-provoking essays about music and the performing arts viewed from current Anthropocene-aware perspectives. It will be of great interest to students and scholars in the humanities and social sciences, as well as a broader readership involved in art and environment policies.

List of contents

1. Introduction Part 1: Making nature Stage matters 2. Heating, ventilating, cleaning: air quality in performance halls in 19th-century Paris 3. Synthetic waters: aquatic spectacles in France in the 19th century 4. An investigation into gas lighting in 19th-century Parisian theatres On becoming modern 5. Naturally speaking about music? An inquiry into music journals, 1850-1930 6. Spectral music, nature and the ecological crisis 7. New music in the Anthropocene: notes of an apprenticeship Part 2: Tracking materiality Uncovering Genealogies 8. The making of Eco-Sonic Media: conversation with Jacob Smith 9. Organology and the silencing of musical instrument museums Current ecologies of musical instruments 10. Producing string quartets: wood, nature, and naturality 11. African wood and sustainable ambitions: the case of Warwick 12. The objects of free improvisation Part 3: Looking forward Performing what? 13. Do we really need new narratives? 14. The sound of the Anthropocene: Music and empowerment in a refugee camp 15. Le Grand Orchestre de la Transition: a grassroots project in retrospect Changing what? 16. Beyond sustainability: The music industries declare emergency on planet Earth - or do they? 17. An ecological redirection for music and the arts? A conversation with Diego Landivar

About the author

François Ribac was a composer of musical theatre and a sociologist, emeritus senior lecturer at the University of Burgundy and associated member of LADYSS laboratory, France. His research focused on environmental humanities, popular music, sound reproduction and cultural expertise.
Isabelle Moindrot is Professor of Theatre Studies at Université Paris 8 and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF). Her work focuses on operatic dramaturgy, the history of theatrical spectacle and contemporary opera staging.
Nicolas Donin is Professor and Chair of musicology at the University of Geneva. He has published extensively on the history of music and musicology since the 19th century, with a focus on contemporary composition and performance.

Product details

• Authors: Francois Moindrot Ribac
• Assisted by: Nicolas Donin (Editor), Isabelle Moindrot (Editor), François Ribac (Editor)
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 08.08.2025
• EAN: 9781032280103
• ISBN: 978-1-0-3228010-3
• No. of pages: 306
• Series: Routledge Explorations in Environmental Studies
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Miscellaneous; Rock, Media Studies, Popular Culture, Rock & Pop music, MUSIC / General, NATURE / Essays, NATURE / Ecology, MUSIC / Instruction & Study / Theory, PERFORMING ARTS / General, Social & cultural history, PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / History & Criticism, MUSIC / Philosophy & Social Aspects, PERFORMING ARTS / Storytelling, Opera, MUSIC / Essays, Applied ecology, Theatre Studies, Environmentalist thought & ideology, Communication Studies, Social and cultural history, Social impact of environmental issues, Pop Music, Popular Music, Performance Art, Environmentalist thought and ideology