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9780819522573 : musicking-small
Paperback / softback
238 Pages
$24.95 USD
Add to Cart
9780819572240 : musicking-small
Electronic book text
238 Pages
$17.99 USD
Add to Cart
Paperback / softback
July 31, 1998
9780819522573
English
238
9.00 Inches (US)
6.00 Inches (US)
.8 Pounds (US)
$24.95 USD, £16.95 GBP
v2.1 Reference
Electronic book text
March 1, 2011
9780819572240
English
238
9.00 Inches (US)
6.00 Inches (US)
$17.99 USD, £13.50 GBP
v2.1 Reference

Musicking

The Meanings of Performing and Listening

By Christopher Small
Wesleyan University Press
Acclaimed scholar rethinks the nature and meaning of music.

Extending the inquiry of his early groundbreaking books, Christopher Small strikes at the heart of traditional studies of Western music by asserting that music is not a thing, but rather an activity. In this new book, Small outlines a theory of what he terms "musicking," a verb that encompasses all musical activity from composing to performing to listening to a Walkman to singing in the shower.

Using Gregory Bateson's philosophy of mind and a Geertzian thick description of a typical concert in a typical symphony hall, Small demonstrates how musicking forms a ritual through which all the participants explore and celebrate the relationships that constitute their social identity. This engaging and deftly written trip through the concert hall will have readers rethinking every aspect of their musical worlds.

About the Author

CHRISTOPHER SMALL is author of Music, Society, Education (Wesleyan, 1996), Music of the Common Tongue (1987; Wesleyan, 1998), and Schoenberg (1978). Senior Lecturer at Ealing College of Higher Education in London until 1986, he lives in Sitges, Spain.

Reviews

"[Small is] a perfect outsider critic, the kind of wise, generalizing mind who sees the whole picture; he is the opposite of a striving, circumspect academic who has followed the trail of specialization toward the goal of tenure. Though educated in the classical tradition and thoroughly at home with its canon, Small has shown a rare catholicity of interests . . . like all gurus, Small teaches more about how to live in relation to the subject matter than he does about the subject matter itself . . . Small's strength is openness. He fiercely believes in the universality of musical experience and seeks to make understanding of it accessible to the general reader . . . His most personal book, Musicking can be seen as a bold divestment of his own cultural training, ending in the man standing naked before his peers."—Lingua Franca

"With every passing year Christopher Small's profound and endlessly subtle understanding of musicking becomes a more useful foundation for future work. His clear prose, patiently and carefully explaining what should have been obvious, is a model for us all in this era of so much deliberately ambiguous or unintentionally obscure writing . . . The great clarity of worldview, wisdom and indispensible insights they contain will move every reader toward a better understanding of musicking as a pleasurable path to a sustainable future."—Ethnomusicology

"[Small is] a perfect outsider critic, the kind of wise, generalizing mind who sees the whole picture; he is the opposite of a striving, circumspect academic who has followed the trail of specialization toward the goal of tenure. Though educated in the classical tradition and thoroughly at home with its canon, Small has shown a rare catholicity of interests . . . like all gurus, Small teaches more about how to live in relation to the subject matter than he does about the subject matter itself . . . Small's strength is openness. He fiercely believes in the universality of musical experience and seeks to make understanding of it accessible to the general reader . . . His most personal book, Musicking can be seen as a bold divestment of his own cultural training, ending in the man standing naked before his peers."—Lingua Franca

"[Small] forces the reader to grasp the reality that different audiences and social factors obligate variant approaches, and he concludes with an aesthetic orientation of universal validity . . . He unites the musicological and the ethnomusicological in a manner which neither of these disciplines has managed thus far, and in the process provides a penetrating, sophisticated, multicultural challenge to traditional concepts of 'musicking'."—Choice

Endorsements

"Christopher Small has something of the guru's gift of saying wise things in the simplest but also most engaging way. The book is instructive and enlightening, interesting to think about, and even to differ with . . . stimulating and rewarding."—Ross Chambers
Wesleyan University Press
Music / Culture
  • MUSIC / General (145 Titles)
  • SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social (291 Titles)

Paperback / softback
July 31, 1998
9780819522573
English
238
9.00 Inches (US)
6.00 Inches (US)
.8 Pounds (US)
$24.95 USD, £16.95 GBP
v2.1 Reference
Electronic book text
March 1, 2011
9780819572240
English
238
9.00 Inches (US)
6.00 Inches (US)
$17.99 USD, £13.50 GBP
v2.1 Reference
9780819522573 : musicking-small
Paperback / softback
238 Pages
$24.95 USD
Add to Cart
9780819572240 : musicking-small
Electronic book text
238 Pages
$17.99 USD
Add to Cart

Other Titles by Christopher Small

9780819576392 : the-christopher-small-reader-small-walser

The Christopher Small Reader

Christopher Small, edited by Robert Walser
Jul 2016 - Wesleyan University Press
$75.00 USD - Hardback
$22.95 USD - Paperback / softback
$18.99 USD - Electronic book text
9780819572257 : music-of-the-common-tongue-small

Music of the Common Tongue

Survival and Celebration in African American Music
Christopher Small
Mar 2011 - Wesleyan University Press
$32.95 USD - Paperback / softback
$25.99 USD - Electronic book text
9780819572233 : music-society-education-small-walser

Music, Society, Education

Christopher Small
Mar 2011 - Wesleyan University Press
$24.95 USD - Paperback / softback
$19.99 USD - Electronic book text

Other Titles from Music / Culture

9780819500489 : dissonant-landscapes-storvoeld

Dissonant Landscapes

Music, Nature, and the Performance of Iceland
Tore Storvøld
Jun 2023 - Wesleyan University Press
$85.00 USD - Hardback
$24.95 USD - Paperback / softback
9780819500182 : critical-brass-snyder

Critical Brass

Street Carnival and Musical Activism in Olympic Rio de Janeiro
Andrew Snyder
Nov 2022 - Wesleyan University Press
$95.00 USD - Hardback
$26.95 USD - Paperback / softback
9780819580931 : love-and-rage-tatro

Love and Rage

Autonomy in Mexico City's Punk Scene
Kelley Tatro
Nov 2022 - Wesleyan University Press
$85.00 USD - Hardback
$25.95 USD - Paperback / softback
See All 92 Titles from Music / Culture

Other Titles in MUSIC / General

9780813184272 : swing-it-sforza

Swing It!

The Andrews Sisters Story
John Sforza
Oct 2021 - University Press of Kentucky
$35.00 USD - Electronic book text
$30.00 USD - Paperback / softback
9780819578952 : a-new-and-concise-history-of-rock-and-r-b-through-the-early-1990s-charry

A New and Concise History of Rock and R&B through the Early 1990s

Eric Charry
Mar 2020 - Wesleyan University Press
$28.00 USD - Paperback / softback
$22.99 USD - Electronic book text
9780819578006 : american-music-documentary-harbert

American Music Documentary

Five Case Studies of Ciné-Ethnomusicology
Benjamin J. Harbert
Jun 2018 - Wesleyan University Press
$85.00 USD - Hardback
$27.95 USD - Paperback / softback
$22.99 USD - Electronic book text
See All 145 Titles in MUSIC / General


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