The Musician as Philosopher: New York's Vernacular Avant-Garde, 1958-1978 (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780226831763)

An insightful look at how avant-garde musicians of the postwar period in New York explored the philosophical dimensions of music's ineffability.

The Musician as Philosopher explores the philosophical thought of avant-garde musicians in postwar New York: David Tudor, Ornette Coleman, the Velvet Underground, Alice Coltrane, Patti Smith, and Richard Hell. It contends that these musicians--all of whom are understudied and none of whom are traditionally taken to be composers--not only challenged the rules by which music is written and practiced but also confounded and reconfigured gendered and racialized expectations for what critics took to be legitimate forms of musical sound. From a broad historical perspective, their arresting music electrified a widely recognized social tendency of the 1960s: a simultaneous affirmation and crisis of the modern self.


Author: Michael Gallope
ISBN-10: 0226831760
ISBN-13: 9780226831763
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Language: English
Published: 03/15/2024
Pages: 320
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.02lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.70d