Audio Culture:
Readings in Modern Music
by Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner, Eds.
Continuum Press, New York, 2004
472 pp. Trade, $100.00; paper, $19.95
ISBN: 0-8264-1614-4; ISBN: 0-8264-1615-2.
Reviewed by Dene Grigar
Texas Womans University
dgrigar@twu.edu
I was sitting in a North Texas bar with
my copy of Audio Culture laying
on the counter in front of me. A neatly-dressed
man in his late 30s who had just come
to the bar to buy a drink struck up a
conversation with my companion and me
while he waited for service. Eyeing the
book, our conversation turned to its contents.
"Was [Karlheinz] Stockhausen" included?
(There are two essays by the composer.)
Was there an essay about experimental
music in the book? (There is a whole section
devoted to experimental music.) Did it
contain a good reference section? (There
are seven different sections.) Picking
up the book, he thumbed through its pages.
I watched him scan the various essays.
Then, he took out his pen and jotted down
the ISBN number. An aspiring electronic
musician, he said he had been looking
for a book "like this one" to read.
I tell this story because it illustrates
the kind of reaction many readers will
have toward Christoph Cox and Daniel Warners
Audio Culture. I, for one, annotated
the book severely, marking it up in various
color of highlighters and pens and dog-earring
its pagesso much of what it
offers is vital to my work and those articles
that are not fascinated me, nonetheless.
To be honest, no one looking at the collection
of 57 well-chosen essays written by some
of the biggest names in music and reprinted
from books and publications well-noted
for their contribution to music theory
will be able to resist reading and buying
the book.
In fact, there is just so much that makes
this book valuable that it is difficult
to name them all. Both the content and
the structure of Audio Culture
add to its strength. Essays by futurist
Luigi Russolo, musician Edgard Varèse,
theorist Marshall McLuhan, several by
Brian Eno, Pauline Oliveros, Glenn Gould,
Umberto Eco, several by John Cage, artist
László Moholy-Nagy, and,
of course, Stockhausen are among the many
eclectic readings included in the book.
Some of the most interesting essays come
from Mary Russo and Daniel Warner ("Rough
Music, Futurism, and Postpunk Industrial
Noise Bands"), Simon Reynolds ("Noise"
and "Post-Rock"), McLuhan ("Visual and
Accoustic Space"), Ola Stockfelt ("Adequate
Modes of Listening"), and Kim Cascone
("The Aesthetics of Failure"). Essays
at times reference one another (as in
Henry Cowell talking about Varèse
in "The Joys of Noise"), engage in debate
(as in Iain Chambers and Pierre Schaeffer
talking about listening), and build upon
others theory (as in Russo and Warners
talking about Russolos futurist
views). The end result is a complete and
cohesive treatment of modern music. Anyone
who has edited a collection knows that
such an outcome is not an easy one to
attain, but it is certainly achieved here.
Divided into two parts , "Theories" and
"Practices," containing three and six
sections, respectively, Audio Culture
offers essays that address such topics
as definitions and approaches to music,
modes of listening, electronic reproduction,
types of musics, DJ culture, and electronica,
to name just a few. Also included with
the essays is, as suggested previously,
an abundance of reference material, from
a Chronology of modern music, to a Glossary,
to Selected Discography and a Selected
Bibliography, Notes for Quotations, an
Index of Quotations, as well as a general
Index. Each section opens with a series
of quotes contextualizing the theme or
pertaining directly to it. Aldous Huxleys
comment about "the twentieth century"
being known as "the Age of Noise" helps
to kick off the section on "Music and
Its Others: Noise, Sound, and Silence,"
for example. Each section and chapter
contains an introduction by the editors.
Introductions for chapters are set apart
from the essay by a gray textbox.
As one would expect about a book on music,
no images are included. But it may seem
strange to many readers that no CD-ROM
accompanies it either. This weakness is
the only one this reviewer can find in
a book that otherwise packs so much muscle.
With growing interest in sound on web-based
environments and the ease with which to
produce it, Cox and Warners Audio
Culture stands as a must-read for
both aspiring artists and music theorists
alike.