Chanter les poètes avec (ou sans) les maths

Reviewed by: The Narrative Arts of Tianjin: Between Music and Language by Francesca R. Sborgi Lawson Yu Hui (bio) The Narrative Arts of Tianjin: Between Music and Language. Francesca R. Sborgi Lawson. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010. SOAS Musicology Series. xiii + 198 pp., audio CD, photos, figures, music examples, appendices, glossary, bibliography, index. ISBN 978-1-4094-0588-7 (hardcover), $149.00. Originating in the Warring States period and thriving during the Tang dynasty, narrative art has always been an important folk musical genre in Chinese society with both entertaining and educational functions long before modern electronic entertainment devices became widely available. The Han Chinese subcultures in different geographical areas also cultivated their own regional narrative-art genres throughout history. The Tianjin metropolitan area in northern China is particularly well known for its several narrative-art genres of the local style. Lawson chooses a unique perspective to look into the commonly shared musical, historical, and cultural background of multiple narrative genres in a single geographical area. As the first published monograph of this approach in both English and Chinese ethnomusicological literature, the book provides detailed description and analysis of the musical structures, performance forms, historical development, and social and cultural background of four out of the ten most important popular narrative genres in Tianjin: shidiao, jinyun dagu, kuaibarshu, and xiang sheng. The author writes that "this book is not meant to be an exhaustive study of the narrative arts of Tianjin. Rather, it is an exploration into the ways in which the manner of performance influences and is influenced by the kinds of information that may be communicated during the course of performance" (4). However, the relationship between music and language is still the emphasis in her research. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 introduces the background of the research in the following chapters: "Introduction," "Prologue," "Teahouses and Marketplaces," "Narrative Arts before 1949," "The Iron Rice Bowl: Shuochang Becomes Quyi after 1949," "Social Relationships," and "Language-Music Relationships." These chapters not only give background on the history, culture, social life, and language matters of Shuochang narrative arts but also the author's personal fieldwork experience interacting with the local audiences and her consultants during her several trips in Tianjin in the 1980s. Part 2 is the main focus of this research. It introduces the history, performers, performances, language, and music of four narrative genres in four sections ("Act") and a conclusion. Each "Act" discusses one narrative art with a subtitle indicating the relationships between the performance aspects of chang (singing) and shuo (speech) in each genre: "Tianjin Popular Tunes (Tianjin Shidiao) Chang over Shuo," "Beijing Drumsong (Jingyun Dagu) Chang [End Page 136] vis-à-vis Shuo," "Fast Clappertales (Kuaibarshu) Shuo vis-à-vis Chang," and "Comic Routines (Xiangsheng) Shuo over Chang." The subtitles are well chosen, covering four major types of combination of the elements of shuo and chang in these narrative genres. Part 3 comprises appendices with music scores and the related Chinese-language source referenced in the book, such as speech tones, libretti, Chinese text, and characters. Those are important references for anyone who is interested in an in-depth exploration of the narrative-art genres introduced in this book. An audio CD of the selected music examples transcribed in the appendices is included with the book. Among ethnomusicological monographs on traditional Chinese musical arts published in recent decades, this book has several distinct features. First, by presenting the common background shared by multiple narrative-art traditions in a single geographical area, Lawson helps readers understand the general social, cultural, and historical background of all of these genres. The juxtaposition of the commonalities and distinctions of each genre helps readers better understand and differentiate the characteristics of each. Second, the author integrates her personal experiences in her field trips with ethnomusicological descriptions and analysis, creating an unusual writing style so the readers are immersed into the musical scene easily. Notably, the author writes in greater detail about the phenomenon of social networks (guanxi) and her personal interactions with the local people during field trips, which makes the book itself a narrative story about her research process. Third, Lawson paid meticulous attention to Chinese pronunciations in the romanization of...

Francesco Bernardi (known as Senesino: 1686-1759) is recognised as one of the most prominent singers of the eighteenth century. With performing credits throughout Europe, he was viewed as a contralto castrato of incredible technical accomplishment in voice and dramatic portrayal. Yet, even considering his fame, success, and frequent and prominent scandals, Senesino has remained little-researched today. The eighteen operas newly composed by George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) for him have been the primary reference sources which define current views of Senesino’s voice. For example, regarding the singer’s vocal range, Winton Dean states the following based on Charles Burney’s account of Senesino: ‘His compass in Handel was narrow (g to e″ at its widest, but the g appears very rarely, and many of his parts, especially in later years, do not go above d″) [… ] Quantz’s statement that he had ‘a low mezzo-soprano voice, which seldom went higher than f ″’ probably refers to his earliest years.’* Dean’s assessment is incomplete and provides an inaccurate sense of Senesino’s actual vocal range, which, in fact, extended beyond his cited range to g''. The upper reaches of Senesino’s voice were not only utilised in his ‘earliest years’ but throughout the entirety of his career. Operas such as Giulio Cesare, Rodelinda, and Orlando account for only a small portion of the 112 operatic works in which the singer is known to have performed during his forty years on stage. This thesis expands perceptions of Senesino’s vocal range and aspects of technical skill in vocal and dramatic portrayal to provide an informed sense of the singer from the time of his operatic debut to his final years performing. In Volume I elements of Senesino’s career from 1700 to 1740 are assessed. Volume II comprises musical examples, aria transcriptions, a catalogue of all known operatic performances in which Senesino sang, and dramatic considerations that further contextualise the singer’s talents. To identify clearly his abilities and experience, Chapter 1 introduces primary source accounts of Senesino’s voice, dramatic portrayal, personal style of performance, rhetorical delivery, skill with ornamentation (including his famed messa di voce), and personality. The crafting of fame was also an important aspect of any eighteenth-century singer’s success. Senesino, like Farinelli and many other castrati of his time, was active in shaping the type, content, and musical and dramatic qualities of his roles. Only recently have aspects of singer involvement in role development been truly considered; this thesis is one of the first to bring focus on to Senesino in this regard. Three periods in Senesino’s operatic career are defined in this thesis and aspects of the singer’s changing voice, relationship with colleagues and composers, and dramatic portrayal are considered. Senesino built his reputation in Italian and German early-career performances from 1700 to 1719: Chapter 2 assesses Giovanni Maria Ruggieri’s 1707 opera Armida abbandonata illustrating how the singer was already viewed favourably in comparison to his established colleagues Nicolini and Maria Anna Garberini Benti (la Romanina). Senesino performed predominantly in London from 1720 to 1733 and upon his arrival there, he faced unfavourable public perception and endeavoured to change his off-stage reputation through the characters he portrayed on stage, particularly in the operas of Giovanni Bononcini (1670-1747). In Chapter 3 specific aspects of Senesino’s intervention to shape his vocal and dramatic portrayals are delineated in relation to Bononcini’s 1722 opera La Griselda. Senesino’s late career from 1733 to 1740 is addressed in Chapter 4 and elements of vocal deterioration, competition, resentment, and the singer’s over-zealous intervention to secure work are assessed in relation to Eumene, by Giovanni Antonio Giaj (1690-1764). While the primary focus of this thesis is Senesino himself, biographical information and an evaluation of compositional style for Giovanni Maria Ruggieri, Giovanni Bononcini, and Giovanni Antonio Giaj are also detailed. *Winton Dean, ‘Senesino,’ GMO, accessed 24 August 2017. See also Charles Burney, The Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Provinces, 2nd edn, 2 vols (London: T. Becket and Co., 1775), II, 175-76.

Reviewed by: Gongs & Pop Songs: Sounding Minangkabau in Indonesia by Jennifer A. Fraser Megan Collins (bio) Gongs & Pop Songs: Sounding Minangkabau in Indonesia. Jennifer A. Fraser. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2015. Research in International Studies, Southeast Asia Series, no. 127. xv + 270 pp., photos, tables, musical examples, discography, glossary of Minangkabau-language terms, index, online audio and video resources. ISBN: 978-0-89680-294-0 (hardcover), $60.00; ISBN: 978-0-89680-295-7 (paperback), $23.00; ISBN: 978-0-89680-490-6 (e-book), $23.99. In this richly detailed ethnographic work, Jennifer Fraser explores how people who identify as Minangkabau use a local gong music called talempong (small, bronze kettle gongs) to frame and construct identity in West Sumatra, Indonesia. An important theme of the book is that the arts "actively foster and create ethnic sensibilities" (134). However, within that, Fraser reminds us that it is imperative to recognize localized difference within moments of ethnic sameness. Talempong music is one mechanism that mobilizes such feelings. I have written about talempong in connection with its Malaysian counterpart, cakelempong, and I am happy to see this ethnography now devoted to it (Collins 2002). Using a cognitive approach to ethnicity through Thomas Turino's concept of cosmopolitanism (2000), Fraser divides talempong into indigenous and cosmopolitan ensembles. The indigenous ensembles, of which there are two types, talempong duduak (a row of kettle gongs on one wooden frame, with one or two players, seated) and talempong pacik (inter-locking handheld kettle gongs, two or three players, processional) are centered in nagari (a village polity specific to Minangkabau) and played at weddings. Intervallic differences between kettle gongs in these ensembles are not standardized and vary from ensemble to ensemble, village to village, as a deliberate aural marker of village autonomy. Specifically, the indigenous ensembles explored in this book, which remain contemporaneous with the newer ones, are talempong Unggan and Paninjauan, that is, from the villages Unggan and Paninjauan. The cosmopolitan ensembles, for example, orkes talempong (implying a large ensemble, orchestra), which later became talempong kreasi baru (talempong for new creations/new talempong), typically contain kettle-gong sets, on multiple wooden frames, which are tuned in a diatonic-chromatic idiom and employ functional harmony. These, Fraser associates with schools, tourist performances, elite weddings, and music institutions, in particular the tertiary-level Indonesian Arts Institute (Institut Seni Indonesia [ISI]), in Padangpanjang. While for many Minangkabau people, cosmopolitan talempong is now understood as a sonic marker of themselves within Indonesia, Fraser suggests the music was developed in a process typical of elite reformist projects (Turino 2000), where "local elements are plugged into foreign frameworks" (140). The [End Page 134] site of this development was ISI, which Fraser attended as an exchange student in 1998–99 and to which she returned in subsequent research trips. Fraser traces the trajectories of the scene, through extensive interviews, analysis of commercial recordings, notational representation of the music (both Western and cipher), video recordings (accessed on the web), and personal experiences. In chapter 1, Fraser explores Minangkabau ethnicity within a cognitive frame, sets up her subsequent discussions on the professionalization of West Sumatran performing arts, and introduces the talempong gongs and the Minangkabau pop songs of the title. When considering exchange between money and music, Fraser chooses to use "monetization" rather than the more loaded term "commodification" and advises that it is very important to consider the ethnographic specifics of such exchanges (33). Chapter 2, "Talempong and Community," is based on fieldwork in the villages of Unggan and Paninjauan. It contains insightful observations about the sonic construction of local identity through talempong music, as performed predominantly at weddings and organized through adat (customary) practices. Fraser was apprenticed to a senior player, and the women performers of these seated talempong ensembles are given a strong voice in the text. The village-specific repertoire, kettle-gong tuning, and the distinct order of gongs on their wooden stand, which changes from piece to piece, combine to express what it "sounds like to be from Unggan, but not Paninjauan or Sialang" (63). While she acknowledges that payment is important to the players, it is not paramount. Rather, music is seen as part of gift-exchange processes...

Reviewed by: Musical Minorities: The Sounds of Hmong Ethnicity in Northern Vietnam by Lonán Ó Briain Marie-Pierre Lissoir (bio) Musical Minorities: The Sounds of Hmong Ethnicity in Northern Vietnam. Lonán Ó Briain. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. xxi + 208 pp., figures, tables, music examples, website content (audio and video), glossary, bibliography, index. ISBN 978-0-19-062697-6 (paperback), $29.95; ISBN: 978-0-19-062696-9 (hardcover), $99.00. Companion website: http://www.oup.com/us/musicalminorities. Hmong populations, belonging to the Hmong-Yao ethnolinguistic family, are settled in several countries of continental Southeast Asia: China, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. Many also migrated to other continents—primarily North America (United States and Canada) and Europe (especially France). Part of the many minority groups of these Southeast Asian countries, the Hmong and their identity are often clearly and rigidly defined, either by the former colonial power, the local authorities, or neighboring ethnic groups. Due to the community's history and numerous migrations, Hmong culture and music have been described largely by scholars and amateurs in comparison to other ethnic groups of the region. Rare are the research works, however, that provide as subtle and nuanced an understanding of the sounds of the Hmong community as does this book by Lonán Ó Briain. The book is introduced with two case studies that directly plunge the reader into Ó Briain's fieldwork in Vietnam. These sketches from the field are regularly used throughout the different chapters of the book, describing musicians or providing specific interpretations. The author bases his reflections and analyses on these empirical examples that perfectly illustrate the "several ways of experiencing ethnicity" (5). As indicated by its title, the book discusses several aspects of the sounds surrounding Hmong communities, which are influenced by history, economy, politics, tourism, and religion. The different recordings available on the companion website are a valuable addition, as the twenty-four videos and seven audio recordings of traditional and pop music, rituals, and touristic performances illustrate the variety of sounds and music of the ethnic group. The author uses the Hmong RPA (Romanized Popular Alphabet) for the Hmong terms and explains the writing system to the reader. A very useful glossary of Hmong and Vietnamese words also appears at the end of the book. Ó Briain approaches ethnicity and its boundaries not only "in relation to the state" but also as a complex and multivalent phenomenon carried out by a population endowed with agency and resilience (8). He examines "the manifestation, manipulation, and contamination of ethnicity through sound," pointing out that "the circulation of these symbolically loaded sounds perpetually reformulates the meanings of Hmong ethnicity and minority identity in Vietnam" (9). This use of sound as a medium to approach Hmong identity "liberates the concept of ethnicity from fixed boundaries and categories," [End Page 149] illustrating the malleability and complexity of the concept (9). As he does for ethnicity, the author avoids compartmentalized musical categories, as they don't produce "conclusive results because of the diversity of contexts" in which Hmong music is performed. These categories should be understood as continuously in mutation, in flux (80). With this volume, Ó Briain offers a work of great intellectual integrity and transparency, based on empirical work illustrated by case studies, discussing the research of other scholars and presenting his own interpretations based on his personal experience and his informants' perceptions. The book genuinely reflects the constant mutations of Hmong culture and the representations of their identity. The first chapter, "On Becoming Vietnamese," examines how popular Vietnamese-language songs build the image of minority groups in Vietnam and participate, with all the stereotypes these songs carry, in its inscription within Vietnamese national consciousness. Chapter 2, "Hybridity and the Other in Modern National Music," explains through the case of a modified Hmong reed pipe how Hmong musics and sounds were integrated into the national musical landscape. This case study illustrates "the potential of music to reflect and refract social and political dynamics" (57). The next chapter, "Hmong Traditional Music and Folklore," presents different perspectives on Hmong traditional and folkloric music performed in the Sa Pa district that counter reductive portrayals of minority groups in Vietnam. The chapter is built around...

Reviewed by: South African Music: A Century of Traditions in Transformation Veit Erlmann South African Music: A Century of Traditions in Transformation By Carol Muller Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2004. This book is part of ABC-CLIO's new World Music Series, according to series editor Michael Bakan, designed to make available "accessible yet substantive introductory text[s] on a specific world music region or area" (xi). To the South African-born author this mandate entailed shaping the volume in large part via her "personal experiences and intellectual interest in Africa and its music" (xxxi). Aside [End Page 219] from an introductory chapter in which Muller offers an overview of "A Century of Traditions in Transformation," and chapter two in which she examines Paul Simon's seminal Graceland album as "a contested musical collaboration," the book offers original material indeed based on the author's numerous research projects. Thus, chapter three is a finely etched portrayal of Sathima Bea Benjamin, one of South Africa's more prominent jazz vocalists and a major figure in the Cape Town jazz scene of the 1950s and 1960s. Muller here deftly interweaves her account of Benjamin with a discussion of the vibrant musical scene in Cape Town until its destruction by the apartheid regime (which forced Benjamin and her husband, Abdulla Ibrahim, into exile), along the way offering personal reflections on the experience of exile and dislocation (Benjamin and Muller spent many years living in New York). Chapter five, "Music and Migrancy," similarly draws on Muller's fieldwork and musical involvement with a group of Durban-based maskanda musicians and gumboot dancers. In chapter five, in turn, Muller returns to what is arguably her main contribution to South African ethnomusicology. Entitled "The Hymns of Nazaretha," the chapter explores the ritual practices and music of the ibandla lamaNazaretha, one of the most influential and in many ways most "traditional" black churches in and around Durban. Chapter six, finally, offers what Muller calls "Final Reflections," a series of brief—well, too brief, really—snapshots on issues as diverse as "Colonial History," "The Body," and "The Peculiarity of the Hybrid." There are also five appendices: one on "A Music of Encounters" in which Muller reviews a mix of European historical sources on a broad range of African musics from South Africa all the way to Nigeria and Morocco. Another appendix lists "Key Dates in South African History," while the remaining three appendices offer the reader glimpses of topics as diverse as "Selected Websites," "Themes Common to the Study of African Music," and, most usefully, a "Discussion of Musical Examples on Compact Disc." This clearly is a lot of material, and some readers may find it hard to see the common thread in it all. But then, Muller's main concern in writing this book just may have been the opposite: to show that there is very little holding the many musical traditions of South Africa together other than the fact that they are all expressions of disconnectedness, migration, and transformation, or—as Muller calls it—travel. Veit Erlmann University of Texas-Austin Copyright © 2006 The Indiana University Press

休閒遊憩長久以來的焦點，主要是放置在休憩和產業活動的主題或是歷史（時間）的脈絡之相關領域上，反而較少著墨在與空間相關的議題上。針對此較少被注意的研究空缺，本論文嘗試探究休憩空間中的時空相關範域，並援引社會學者Lefebvre對空間的論述，探討空間生產對地方休憩空間與文化空間再生產的影響。 Lefebvre對空間生產的論述，即是以空間實踐（spatial practices）、空間表徵（representations of space）、表徵空間（representational space）三個向度，以理解社會空間結構的建構，也為文化空間理論帶來重大的變革。而本研究以Lefebvre的論述為基礎，聚焦在休閒遊憩空間，並以三義的勝興車站周遭空間為例，針對其變遷的文化空間再生產過程，以反思性的立場探究。此反思性即是以專業者的責任，與勝興車站周邊的未來永續發展為根基的觀點與態度。 另外，本研究試圖探究在打造桐花村時期，從車站周遭的空間實踐中，透過空間表徵、空間實間和表徵空間三者的螺旋狀之動態歷程，去揭露空間實踐者如何重複的從空間具象出發，對空間的構思轉化為具體實踐過程，進而形塑出勝興車站之休憩空間架構，並不斷在日常生活中演練著空間的生產，即是清晰的呈顯文化空間再生產的整過過程，並揭露出其中的空間權力結構。

Tolley argues, first, for a sharper distinction between three kinds of representation of the space of outer appearances: (i) the original intuition of space, (ii) the metaphysical representation of this space via the a priori concept “expounded” in the Transcendental Aesthetic, and (iii) the representation of this space in geometry, via the construction of concepts of spaces in intuition. He then shows how more careful attention to this threefold distinction allows for a conservative, consistently nonconceptualist and non-intellectualist interpretation of the handful of suggestive remarks Kant makes in the Transcendental Deduction about the dependence of various representations of space on the understanding—against recent interpretations which argue that the Deduction’s remarks require that Kant revise the impression given in the Aesthetic (and elsewhere) that intuition in general, and the original intuition of space in particular, enjoys a priority to, and independence from, all acts and representations of the understanding.

Theater as a place, but also as a field of human and team activity involving the creation of performances performed in the presence of the viewer, has a centuries-old history. This study aims at examining the links between theatre architecture/space and public spaces, trying to answer to what extent these objects have become attractors in its space and how they affect the activity of cultural and social life. The subjects of the study are Warsaw theatres, both historical and contemporary, in the context of their impact on the surrounding public spaces. A specific methodology was elaborated to evaluate potential impacts. According to the spatial relations between the theatre and its surroundings, they are clustered in the following typologies: emanation, isolation, and interference theatre. The research methods applied for defining and solving the scientific problem are: (i) critical analysis, (ii) comparative analysis, (iii) observation without intervention, and (iv) intuitive method based on the author’s personal experience. The conclusions are based on empirical research, with particular emphasis on the research material obtained by field research. The results of the research allow one to draw conclusions regarding the influence of theatrical places on public spaces in the city structure. The mission of the theater is changed, activating events and building social bonds. Theater space and its surroundings are shaped in accordance with these new standards and social expectations to be transformed into a public space of a cultural nature. Thus, presently, urban theatrical space is a site for spectacle, with a social and cultural mission. Theater space and its surroundings should be shaped in accordance with changing standards and social expectations, and it should be a public space of a cultural nature.

Blogging Illness: Recovering in Public

The way we experience space has a direct relationship to the way we perceive it, as evidenced by the ways that space has been represented in painting throughout history. My research is concerned with the representation of space in contemporary painting. Contemporary experiences of space through new media screens offer painters a unique challenge that requires them to think about representing space in new ways. My research focuses on the role of the window in painting, a device that has confirmed painters’ preoccupation with representing space on a two-dimensional plane. I provide an historical overview that establishes the window as an important spatial and metaphorical concern within painting. I draw a connection between the window and Plato’s cave as a frame of representation. In the context of this research, ‘space’ refers to a painterly space which includes both illusory space and actual physical/material space. Whereas Gilles Deleuze defines these different kinds of space as either ‘haptic’ or ‘optic space’, I use the term ‘unstable space’ to describe that which occurs when both ‘haptic’ and ‘optic space’ coexist on a picture plane. In considering Plato’s cave as a window or frame of representation, I recognise the demarcation of key spatial and representational concepts related to the window in painting. As with Plato’s cave, the window demarcates binary opposites that have structured much subsequent thinking about art, such as interiority/exteriority, nature/culture, illusion/reality. Through Plato’s theories, I specifically draw attention to the dualist structure of his belief system that posits tensions between interior and exterior, reality and illusion, nature and culture. I establish the term ‘unstable space’ through examining the theories of Deleuze and Jacques Derrida that deconstruct Plato’s writing. Their theories offer a means by which to construct new meanings within the space of painting, as they emphasise the instability of the binaries afforded by Plato’s philosophy and instead suggest the possibilities of multiplicity. The contemporary ‘windows’ of media screens significantly shift the metaphor of the singular window to the multiplicity of windows within windows. This multiplicity reflects the way we currently experience space and the effect this has on the thinking of space in contemporary painting practice. In this way, painting’s material dimension and illusory space can be explored not in terms of binary oppositions but as complementaries. Having traced the development of the window as an important representational device in painting, I propose that the window can be used as a mechanism to explore the ‘unstable space’ through painting. This space operates between spatial and representational theory. Through the analysis of specific works of art by contemporary artists chosen as exemplars in the field of painting, I argue that the unstable space can be created solely in the medium of paint. My research extends understandings of space as represented within the limits of a two-dimensional surface. The representation of space within my painting practice results from my reimagining of the window as an unstable space, my exploring of the perception and representation of ambiguous space, and my engaging with pictorial illusion through abstraction. Explicitly, the studio research found that the screen or window was able to act as a metaphor for the body and as such effectively articulate the experience of interiority and exteriority, surface and figure, ground and distance.

Theater of Ancestral Mediation

When American domestic ideology developed in the mid-nineteenth-century, many women writers started to write about values of home, women’s domestic practices, and children’s education. Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time also portrayed the white middle-class American housewives during the time. Writing the novel from her own experience, Fern presents various types of housewives to unveil housewives problems in the middle-class patriarchal society. This thesis uses Henri Lefebvre’s notion of space to examine the role and space of the American housewife so as to explore Ruth Hall’s significance in the nineteenth century. As a housewife and woman writer, Fern plays the double role in-between the private space of home and the public space of publishing industry. Likewise, her heroine, Ruth Hall, is a housewife at first and plays the double role as well to make a living after her husband’s death. Since Lefebvre’s spatial concepts involve the spatial practice (the lived space) and representations of space (the conceptualized space), Chapter One investigates the domestic space and role of the middle-class housewives, including Mrs. Ellet, Mrs. Hall, and Ruth along with the analysis of domestic ideology of the time. Chapter Two discusses two different housewives, Mrs. Leon and Mrs. Skiddy, in comparison with the widow Ruth to examine how Fern remaps the boundary between the private and public space to relocate a housewife’s social position. By exploring the significance of Ruth’s success, Chapter Three argues that Fern in fact builds Lefebvre’s representational space (the symbolic space) to empower her readers with a new woman image. By the presentation of various housewives in her book, Fanny Fern demonstrates a new possibility of a housewife’s success for her readers in the nineteenth century United States.

John Cage. By Rob Haskins. (Critical Lives.) London: Reaktion Books, 2012. [180 p. ISBN 9781861899057. $16.95.] Music examples, illustrations, facsimiles, bibliography, discography. we must arrange everything: Erfahrung, Rahmung und Spiel bei John Cage. By Michael Rebhahn. Saarbrucken: Pfau Verlag, 2012. [132 p. ISBN 9783897274761. i18.] Facsimiles, bibliography.In case you missed it, 2012 was a Cage centenary, a point in music history that Deborah Campana summarized in Happy New Ears! In Celebration of 100 Years: The State of Research on John Cage (Notes 69, no. 1 [September 2012]: 9-21). The following reviews two relatively short books about Cage and his work that were written by two authors of the generation of younger musicologists, who approach their subject without being clouded by personal experience of the man himself.Rob Haskins' John Cage is not just another book on Cage; in various ways, Haskins manages to include in only 154 pages of main text more than other authors have covered in tomes with many more pages. The UK publisher Reaktion has so far published 48 volumes within its series Critical Lives, three of them on composers. The other two books are devoted to Claude Debussy and Erik Satie; like those, Haskins' volume on Cage is mostly what one would expect from a biography.Even though the six main chapters of the book perhaps have slightly unusual headings-Becoming, Audacity, Nonattachment, Eminence, Doyen, Parting- they do seem to present a fairly classic structure of presenting an intriguing artist's vita. One could crudely describe such a slightly problematic presentation of artistic life as follows: from finding one's calling for one's art; brave and bold experiments; learning how not to burden the artistic process with one's own potentially limiting and therefore inferior tastes; being recognized in the field; reaching the point where, nearer the end of an artist's life, one is potentially faced with having no new and fresh ideas, and maybe even playing it safe; to what one achieved in the twilight years. In some ways, this is the very crude, overarching structure of Haskins' biography of Cage's life. For the most part, the narration flows extremely smoothly, and the book is a good and enjoyable read.However, Haskins goes far beyond this: he gives us deep insights into various aspects of Cage's oeuvre, not only the musical works, in the narrow sense, but also the literary and poetic examples of his aesthetic thinking, as well as his numerous visual art objects. In addition to a chronicle of the composer's life and artistic output, the reader also learns a great deal about how this music might sound. Haskins' approach of describing the actual sonic dimensions of Cage's music might to some seem fairly unacademic, or even-to purists-amateurish (why talk about specific sounds when some people wrongly believe that Cage did not care about what could be heard?); however, there are two important counterarguments to thinking like this. First: what Haskins does here is remarkable, and will definitely be appreciated by at least two potential target groups of readers: both the lay person-someone who might be interested in music, or even someone who might have always wondered: What is this Cage guy all about? Is there more to him than just 4'33 ?-and students of music, musicians, or musicologists with very little knowledge of Cage, his ideas, and his music, will get a clearer idea about the music's sonic qualities, the soundscapes they create, and which reactions they might foster. Second: the overall effect of what is being discussed here is music, thus not merely treating some of Cage's works as Augenmusik (eye music) or even Gehirnmusik (brain music). In other words, it does matter that these works are performed, listened to and studied as music. Even though books such as James Pritchett's The Music of John Cage (Cam - bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) paved the way for such an approach to writing about Cage's music (as opposed to recognizing only his aesthetics and philosophical concepts as interesting and worth considering academically, and thus one could safely ignore the actual performances and sounds), rarely have I seen this done in such a balanced way, tending toward reader-friendliness when describing the music, yet steering well clear of potentially generic platitudes which might describe a lot of Cage's music as atmospheric. …

Composition pedagogy is explored from the perspective of a composer and a music teacher educator in this article. The primary goal is to help practicing music teachers develop strategies that will encourage students to create original music. The authors provide reflection about the process of helping students compose on the basis of personal experience composing and teaching young composers, via the work of leading scholars in music education and by using narrative excerpts and musical examples. Key strategies are identified that contribute to the successful teaching of composition, particularly at the beginning, middle, and the end of musical compositions. Contributing most notably to this discussion is the use of terminology in teacher feedback.

SOCIOLOGY OF SINGING Singing and Wellbeing: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Proof. By Kay Norton. New York: Routledge, 2016. [xxiv, 202 p. ISBN 9781138825314 (hardcover), $135; ISBN 9781138825321 (paperback), $44.95; ISBN 9781315740065 (e-book), varies.] Music examples, illustrations, references, index.Norton describes her project in Singing and Wellbeing as an attempt to synthesize recent scholarship on social and historical importance of singing with medical evidence of music's health benefits. Her work, which combines fields of music, medical humanities, and medicine, is timely given rise in prominence of work of Oliver Sacks (especially his book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and Brain [New York: Knopf, 2007]) and 2014 film Alive Inside, which documents power of music to activate neural pathways, especially in Alzheimer's patients. (The clip Henry Wakes Up went viral on multiple social media platforms.) The task of combining these three disciplines is daunting, given that all are highly specialized.In industrialized West, fields of music and medicine exist in separate worlds, but historically they have been inextricably linked. (It is not by chance that Apollo was god of music and medicine.) In recent centuries, Western culture and science created a false dichotomy that separated activities of mind and those of body. According to medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman, before seventeenth century, human consciousness was not only collective but also a bio-psycho-spiritual unity. With rise of scientific thought, that consciousness split, and we were suddenly simultaneously [aware of] being a body and having a body, a phenomenon that is associated with the rise of a discursive, metatheoretical 'modernist' orientation to self that is secular, self-reflexive, and ironic (Arthur Kleinman, Rethinking Psychiatry: From Cultural Category to Personal Experience [New York: Free Press, 1988], 50). What is most important for purposes here is that this new split in consciousness interferes with total absorption in lived (ibid.) . It is precisely this total absorption in a lived experience that is central to act of singing, especially group singing. A hyper-individual and self-reflexive consciousness (as found in West) may lead to discomfort with reuniting art of singing and scientific study of medicine. But non-singing Western doctor is in minority; vast majority of healers-across cultures and throughout history-have employed an inflected human voice in some way during healing process, whether through chant, prayer, or song. Western skepticism is one of main challenges that Norton faces in her work.A second challenge is Western tendency toward discipline-specific specialization. Norton's research is not just about music and medicine, but also music and wellbeing. Wellbeing involves far more than just physical health; it is a complex balance of physiological, psychological, social, and political elements. In some ways, this book addresses all of these-from how music changes our physiology to how music can be used to identify with others. Of course, studying such a complicated and multifaceted phenomenon as wellbeing requires expertise in a wide variety of fields. Disciplinary integration creates profound challenges for modern Westerner. Norton recognizes and indeed embraces her own limitations, and so my review must do same. Both Norton and I are trained in field of historical musicology; neither of us is a scientist, psychologist, sociologist, or medical practitioner, but we are both deeply interested in connection between music (singing specifically) and wellbeing in its broadest possible definition. Indeed, Norton's work here extends beyond fields of music and medicine in order to study significance of human singing voice using evidence from fields of anthropology, evolution, world history, psychology, theology, and philosophy. …