Steven Mithen – The Singing Neanderthals
„The basic problem of studying the origins of language is, to understate matters, language leaves few fossils.“ – Edmund Blair Bolles.
In „The Singing Neanderthals“ Steven Mithen, professor of Archaeology at the University in Reading, summarizes his views of the co-evolution of music and language in the history of our species. Drawing evidence from many areas such as anthropology, psychology, neuroscience and musicology, he asserts that music is not only a byproduct of language with no evolutionary value in itself as stated by Steven Pinker for instance. >> more

Leigh Landy – Understanding the Art of Sound Organization
On the recent conference „recycling sampling jamming“ held in Berlin in February this year, Leigh Landy spoke on the subject of sampling in music. Unfortunately I was ill during the course of the festival but the lectures are still available in mp3 format here for those who missed it like me... >> more

Richard Taruskin – The Danger of Music
No doubt, Richard Taruskin is America’s most controversial musicologist. He has sparked many furious debates about topics like historically correct early music performances, the political connotations of John Adams opera “The Death of Klinghoffer” or the lack of moral concerns in the 20th century avant-garde... >> more

Barbara Flückiger – Sound Design
This massive work is now considered the reference book in the area of film sound design in the german speaking world. Swiss researcher Barbara Flückiger does not deliver a to-do-book of practicle tricks and tipps for sound designers but provides nothing less than a ‘philosophy of sound design’ if I’m allowed to name it like that... >> more

David Rothenberg & Marta Ulvaeus – The Book of Music & Nature
This Book collects writings from a variety of authors: included are, among others, Rainer Maria Rilke, John Cage, R. Murray Schafer, Steve Lacy, Michael Ondaatje, Pauline Oliveros, David Toop, Francesco Lopez, Toru Takemitsu and Bernie Krause, to name a few... >> more

Theo van Leeuwen – Speech, Music, Sound
Theo van Leeuwen worked as a film and television producer and used to play jazz before he studied linguistics and became the dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Technology in Sydney. He is now regarded a key figure in the field of social semiotics... >> more

Vladimir Jankélévitch - Irgendwo im Unvollendeten
“Music itself is some sort of silence, because it imposes silence on noises and before all else the most unbearable of these noises are words. Music is the silence of words, like poetry is the silence of prose, it makes the gravity of logos more bearable and prevents men to identify with the act of speaking... >> more

Jean-Luc Nancy – Listening
Holding this book in my hands, I wondered what the cover illustration had to do with the subject of listening. One can see a baroque Venus lying on a bed while a boy whispers something in her ear. There is a young man on the left side leaning over his shoulder to listen in on that conversation... >> more

Stuart Sim – Manifesto For Silence
In Cairo, biggest city on the african continent, noise levels from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. average at about 85 decibels, at central squares even noises often reach 95 decibel, the New York Times recently reports. For Stuart Sim, Professor of Critical Theory in the Deptartment of English Studies at the University of Sunderland, this would be grist to his mill... >> more

Christoph Cox & Daniel Warner – Audio Culture
"Over the past half-century, a new audio culture has emerged, a culture of musicians, composers, sound artists, scholars, and listeners attentive to sonic substance, the act of listening, and the creative possibilities of sound recording, playback, and transmission... >> more

Jean-Francois Augoyard & Henry Torgue – Sonic Experience
In a word: this book is very rewarding reading: loaded with indepth theory and surprising new concepts about the classification of sound phenomena, it took 10 years to translate this work into english. Nothing for someone new to philosophical considerations about music, sound and noise, nevertheless the best summary in this area I know so far... >> more

Bernie Krause – Wild Soundscape
Environmental sound recording appears to look back on a short history: until the late 1960s is was only practiced by some biologists doing reasearch in acoustic interaction in nature. Understandably enough recording equipment at that time was heavy and prone to technical failure in the field... >> more

Morton Feldman – Give my Regards to Eight Street
This Book is a collection of essays, short writings, sleeve notes and little sketches of one of the most influential last century avantegarde composers. Morton Feldman is famous for the quiteness and subtle beauty of his pieces, they were inhabited by a spiritual life rarely found in modern music... >> more