Cybersonic Arts: Adventures in American New Music (Music in American Life)

by Christian Wolff (Author), Michelle Fillion (Author), Gordon Mumma (Author)

New
Illustrated
2015
$31.82

Composer, performer, instrument builder, teacher, and writer Gordon Mumma has left an indelible mark on the American contemporary music scene. A prolific composer and innovative French horn player, Mumma is recognized for integrating advanced electronic processes into musical structures, an approach he has termed Cybersonics. Musicologist Michelle Fillion curates a collection of Mumma's writings, presenting revised versions of his classic pieces as well as many unpublished works from every stage of his storied career. Here, through words and astonishing photos, is Mumma's chronicle of seminal events in the musical world of the twentieth century: his cofounding the Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music; his role in organizing the historic ONCE Festivals of Contemporary Music; performances with the Sonic Arts Union; and working alongside John Cage and David Tudor as a composer-musician with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. In addition, Mumma describes his collaborations with composers, performers, dancers, and visual artists ranging from Robert Ashley and Pauline Oliveros to Marcel Duchamp and Robert Rauschenberg. Candid and insightful, Cybersonic Arts is the eye-opening account of a broad artistic community by an active participant and observer.

Synopsis

Composer, performer, instrument builder, teacher, and writer Gordon Mumma has left an indelible mark on the American contemporary music scene. A prolific composer and innovative French horn player, Mumma is recognized for integrating advanced electronic processes into musical structures, an approach he has termed Cybersonics. Musicologist Michelle Fillion curates a collection of Mumma's writings, presenting revised versions of his classic pieces as well as many unpublished works from every stage of his storied career. Here, through words and astonishing photos, is Mumma's chronicle of seminal events in the musical world of the twentieth century: his cofounding the Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music; his role in organizing the historic ONCE Festivals of Contemporary Music; performances with the Sonic Arts Union; and working alongside John Cage and David Tudor as a composer-musician with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. In addition, Mumma describes his collaborations with composers, performers, dancers, and visual artists ranging from Robert Ashley and Pauline Oliveros to Marcel Duchamp and Robert Rauschenberg. Candid and insightful, Cybersonic Arts is the eye-opening account of a broad artistic community by an active participant and observer.

$31.82

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More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 296
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 15 Sep 2015
ISBN 10: 0252081013
ISBN 13: 9780252081019
Book Overview: A candid account of a broad artistic community by an active participant and observer

Media Reviews

What counts here is the spirit of it, the inventiveness springing from an independence of imagination as well as the willingness and financial necessity to work outside the given conditions of the time. Mumma shows us how that spirit is in fact crucial and, always, of essential value. --Christian Wolff, from the foreword

A wonderful resource for music and the arts, the book can be read as narrative or used as reference. Highly recommended. --Choice
An excellent and engaging book that can take its readers to a dizzying array of places, real and metaphoric. It is an admirable introduction to the mind and spirit of Gordon Mumma as well as a vivid and loving remembrance of an amazing time in the history of music. --ARSC Journal

As all great books about music lead you to do, I couldn't help but reach up to my CD shelves, where various Mumma discs releases on lables like New World and Tzadik are housed. --Gramophone
The firsthand histories flowing from this book are precious, provided by one of the unsung heroes of the American electronic music scene, Gordon Mumma... A valuable resource. --Neural

A contemporary history of a particularly fertile and disruptive time in the advanced arts... Mumma's book bears articulate witness to how this flexible discipline played itself out in concrete situations over the decades. --Avant Music News
Mumma's energetic perspectives on so many topics--as a scholar, inventor, technician, performer, composer, photographer, historian, and documentarian--richly enhance our perspective on this period of rapid change and fruitful innovation. A beautiful and much-anticipated achievement. --Amy C. Beal, author of Johanna Beyer and Carla Bley

Author Bio

Gordon Mumma worked for twenty years as a professor of music at the University of California. In 2000, he received the John Cage Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. His wife Michelle Fillion is a professor of musicology at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, and the author of Difficult Rhythm: Music and the Word in E. M. Forster .