239 research outputs found
Spontaneous music : the first generation British free improvisers
No full textThe British free improvisation scene originated in London and Sheffield during the
mid 1960s. In groups such as AMM, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble and Joseph
Holbrooke, a distinctive and ambitious musicality developed that still occupies most
of its protagonists forty years later.
Marked stylistic contrasts developed within the genre, notably the `atomistic' and
`laminar' methods of interaction. Nonetheless, a consistency of principle and practice
was also apparent that defined British free improvisation as unique. In some respects
the genre resembled its German, Dutch and American counterparts, and also the jazz
and classical avant-gardes that had inspired them. Both conceptually and practically,
however, clear differences remained.
The British free improvisers refined a method and an aesthetic of musical creativity,
which suggested an intimate perspective and a detailed analysis of that which we
accept as `music'. Its techniques and results were unconventional, but remained
consistent with music's defining concepts and experiences. As such, British free
improvisation suggested a more inclusive model of musicality than is common, and
implied a broad critique of the cultural values that define `music' at all. Though the
free improvisers themselves did not explicitly state the connection, their work may be
viewed in the context of Deconstruction: the post-structuralist analytical strategy
associated with philosopher Jacques Derrida.
British free improvisation culminated from innovations within the twentieth century
avant-garde. Referencing styles such as atonality and free jazz, it challenged the
aesthetic, technical and hierarchical standards of Western tradition in a form that was
striking and extreme, but also of logical development and focus. Free improvisation
owed explicit debt to a variety of other musics; its most singular achievement
however, was the redefinition of `rhythm' by which it disguised this fact.
The music of the first generation British free improvisers is reliant upon precise
conceptual and practical execution. But though this has enabled the genre to be
musically innovative, in the long term it has also become a logical problem. With
British free improvisation as its subject, the scrutiny of Deconstruction reveals
significant discrepancies between what `free improvisation' implies and what it
actually represents
Calling me home-'Coo-ee' [music] : song /
No full textP.D.Ltd.5409 (Publisher number). For voice and piano.; Cover title.; Pl. no.: P.D.Ltd.5409.; Also available online http://nla.gov.au/nla.mus-vn5548132; From the collection of Keith Watson. ANL
Writing and the rights of reality: usurpation and potentiality in Derrida, Plato, Nietzsche, and Beckett
No full textThe thesis critically evaluates Jacques Derrida's conferral of the rights of reality on writing, focussing on his theory of an arche-text in light of the speculative nature of this theory. The theory is initially considered in the context of Derrida's elucidation of the usurpatory status of writing within the Platonic and Nietzschean texts. This consideration reveals an admission of writing's usurpatory status by both writers while at the same time demonstrating their awareness of the intrinsically speculative nature of this view, the significance of writing lying in its ability to exteriorise the radically indeterminate status of consciousness m relation to reality rather than its ability to displace consciousness or reality The analyses, therefore, not only bring the Derridean hypothesis of a repressive or phonocentric metaphysical episteme into question but also exhibit the historical and philosophical role of potentiality in relation to writing, writing's ultimate significance lying in its capacity to exteriorise our existence as a mode of potentiality. Accordingly, in the second half of the thesis the Derridean theory of writing is countered with a specifically Aristotelian theory of the text as it is exhibited in the prose of Samuel Beckett, an author whose significance lies in his close alignment with Derridean theory within contemporary criticism. It is demonstrated that this identification has obviated an awareness of the significance of potentiality within the Beckettian text, his work consequently being appraised in the previously neglected context of Aristotelian metaphysics
Touching Freud's dog: H.D.'s tactile poetics
No full text"Do not touch me", Frau Emmy warns Freud in 1889. "Do not touch", Freud echoes in 1933. This time, he is referring to his pet chow, Yofi, warning H.D. that "she snaps - she is very difficult with strangers". Examining the prohibition in light of work by Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy, this article charts the withdrawal that always interrupts touch. Despite Freud's taboo, however, H.D.'s writing seeks to make contact in strange and unnerving ways. Developing Julia Kristeva's account of the semiotic, this paper proposes a literature of touch. Reading H.D.'s poems, alongside Tribute to Freud, and her letters, the author demonstrates that H.D.'s poetics are always haunted by the very (im)possibility of contact
Creation from conflict: The Great War in Irish poetry
No full textThis thesis explores the impact of the First World War on the imaginations of six poets - W.B. Yeats, Robert Graves, Louis MacNeice, Derek Mahon, Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley - all of whom have written in wartime: Graves in the Great War, Yeats in the Great War, the Anglo-Irish War and the Civil War, MacNeice in the Second World War, Mahon, Longley and Heaney in the Northern Ireland Troubles. The thesis locates affinities between these poets in their response to violence, and compares the ways in which they have imaginatively appropriated the images and events of the Great War to facilitate that response. Part I of this study begins by outlining the historical background to Irish participation in the Great War, and considers some of the issues involved in the Irish cultural response to the war which were engendered by the complex domestic politics in Ireland between 1914 and 1918. Chapters two to four constitute a more detailed exploration of these issues as manifested in the work of Yeats, Graves and MacNeice. In the cases of Yeats and MacNeice, their engagement with the subject of the Great War is re-evaluated in order to illuminate repressed or complex areas of Irish history and culture, and to shed new light on their influence on recent Northern Irish poetry. Consideration of Robert Graves's response to the Great War serves to illustrate the ways in which a high-profile association with the War can obscure relations to an Irish or Anglo-Irish tradition. The thesis discusses ways in which these poets have been misrepresented, and considers how far the misrepresentation can be attributed to the contrasting interpretations of the Great War in England and Ireland, and to versions of literary history based upon these interpretations. The second part of the study concentrates on contemporary Northern Irish poetry. Chapter five considers problems pertinent to Northern Ireland in relation to the subject of the Great War by looking at the ways in which remembrance of the war, politicized in order to bolster mythologies of history, reverberates in the context of the Northern Irish Troubles. The final three chapters outline the difficulties encountered by Northern Irish poets Mahon, Heaney and Longley, under pressure to respond to the Troubles, and relate these difficulties to those encountered by the Great War soldier poets. The chapters explore the extent to which the fascination of these three poets with the Great War illuminates their aesthetic strategies, revises aspects of Irish political and cultural history, offers a way of responding to the violence in Northern Ireland, and has determined critical responses to their work. The thesis is concerned with ways in which the Great War has been imagined in Irish writing. It also shows how and why those imaginings have struggled with, and revised aspects of, reductive mythologies of history and competing versions of the literary canon
Haunted weather : music, silence and memory /
No full textThis compilation curated by David Toop represents some of the artists and ideas discussed in his book of same title: London : Serpent's Tail, c2004.Title from container.Compilation of recordings in part previously released: 1988-2004.Compact discs.Program notes by Toop ([8] p.) inserted in container.Disc 2: Weather. Parhelic triangle / Autechre -- Caecilia / Christian Fennesz (Christian Fennesz) -- C7 :: continuum / Ryoji Ikeda (Ryoji Ikeda) -- Reflecters / Derek Bailey, John Stevens -- Analopos / Akio Suzuki -- Yatnajökull / Chris Watson (Chris Watson) -- Maa / Pan Sonic -- Swan style / John Butcher -- Clean tone falling / Kaffe Matthews -- Bottle at park / Toshiya Tsunoda -- Dotted music no. 1 / Taku Sugimoto -- Two listening rooms/Birmingham / David Cunningham -- duoon / Carsten Nicolai and Ryuichi Sakamoto -- Cathnor / Keith Rowe, John Tilbury -- Longplayer 13.2.2003. Excerpt / Jem Finer.Recorded, at least in part, 1977-2003, in part live
Voices of inheritance : aspects of British film and television in the 1980s and 1990s
No full textDuring the 1990s the notion of the heritage film has become a taken for granted
category of British cinema. Rather than dispute the merits of particular films that lie
within this genre I question the construction of the relation between the idea of
heritage and contemporary British film and television. Using the critical literature
established by the contending cultural histories that address the rise of heritage in
British culture, I highlight other, frequently personal and national engagements with
inherited pasts. The concentration upon inheritance lends a greater emphasis to
what is passed on from the past and endures in the present.
The modes of articulating these inherited pasts are formally distinctive and
constructed out of the vocabulary of documentary and fiction. The corpus of texts
begins with the apparently radical avant garde film-making of Derek Jannan and
moves through the work of the Black Audio Film Collective to the apparently
conservative television documentaries of Alan Bennett. These key voices are then
situated in relation to the hegemonic definition of heritage and current debates
concerning British film and television. The persisting opposition which defined
British cinema during the 1980s posits an unofficial cinema characterized by dissent
and urban decay against an official cinema represented by the heritage film. My
corpus of texts challenges this opposition. The different engagements with inherited
pasts take place from different speaking positions and represent a diminishing
publicly funded tradition of film and television production. The range of positions
from margins to centre reveal that there was a contestation of the cultural sources
which are aggregated into the construction of heritage during the 1980s and 1990s
Setting the Style: The Count Basie Orchestra and Its Early Trumpet Players, 1935–1937
No full textThe Count Basie Orchestra is one of the most well-known and popular big bands in jazz history. The musical style of the Count Basie Orchestra, associated with, and often attributed to, Kansas City, is one of the foundational styles of contemporary jazz. The sounds of the Count Basie Orchestra have influenced many, if not all, of the most popular modern big bands, including the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, and the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. However, many of its earliest trumpet players remain overlooked.
The trumpet section holds certain responsibilities regarding the style of a big band because it often states the melody of a tune, is the loudest and highest sounding section, is used to create a sense of excitement, and houses the lead trumpet player who is most often assigned the role of determining, demonstrating, and disseminating style to and across the band; therefore, performance style is often closely tied to the trumpet section. This being so, one would expect that members of the early iterations of the Count Basie Orchestra’s trumpet section would have long been lionized for their role in the development of one of jazz’s primary styles. However, this is not the case; there are few among them that earned the lifelong recognition that Wilbur “Buck” Clayton and Harry “Sweets” Edison did.
The focus of this document is to provide biographical information on the two trumpeters that remain most overlooked from the early Count Basie Orchestra, Carl “Tatti” Smith and Joe Keys. This information will enable us better to flesh out the historical narrative and timeline of the Count Basie Orchestra, and to properly understand and acknowledge the place of these two trumpeters in Jazz history
Making vision into power : Britain's acquisition of the world's first radar-based integrated air defence system 1935 - 1941
No full textThis thesis represents the first application of a current conceptual model of defence acquisition to analyse the historical process, the 1935 - 1941 British acquisition of an integrated air defence system pivoted upon the innovative technology of radar. For successful acquisition of a military capability, the model posits that balanced attention must be focused acoss eight 'lines of developmen' - not only equipment, but also doctrine and concepts, logistics, structures, personnel, organisation, training and information with an overarching requirement for interoperability. This thesis contrasts what turned out to be a successful acquisition, of radar to achive air interception capability by day in the Battle of Britain, with less successful acquisition, or radar to achieve the same capability at night, where an effective system arrived too late to ward off the Blitz. The results establish the validity of the model and its attendant lines of development concepts, and furnish new insights into acquisition processes and military history. Acquisition lessons are derived for the capability-based involvement of industry, for the experience and personality necessary for key managers at different 'life stages' of an acquisition and for the avoidance of over-rapid 'dysfunctional diffusion' of innovative technologies. Historical insights for the Battle of Britain include the sub-optimal performance, for trivial reasons, of key South Coast radars, and the critical importance of the human elements of the radar-based air defence system. For the Blitz, airborne radar hardware has previously been identified as a key problem, whereas research here exposes the greater need for accurate ground control radar, the sound selection and training of pilots and operators in new tactics, and provision of equipment maintainers and test gear. New evidence illustrates that pursuit of an alternative to radar significantly delayed the optimal solution, and throws fresh light both on personalities and on development process management
A Culture of Civic Action: Deliberative Pedagogy for Composition
No full textDespite rhetoric and composition maintaining a role as a producer of democracy, democratic deliberation has not appeared widely as a pedagogical practice, outside of reinforcing traditional modes of argumentative writing. This dissertation articulates the dispositions and practices for a deliberative pedagogy in composition that supports students’ development of rhetorical understandings of social-political life, actively redresses exclusions and inequities in dominant understandings of democracy, and engages the discipline with a progressive vision of social change. Agency and citizenship are re-theorized as a grounding to this pedagogy, making clear how a wide variety of communicative acts support the processes and aims of public deliberation and constitute the behaviors of democracy as a way of life. Drawing from two semesters of in-class study, I demonstrate how employing deliberation as a method of instruction, as thematic content for class study, and as a technique for classroom management encourages students to recognize and self-consciously frame their day-to-day writing and speaking as democratic action. The major findings include that deliberative pedagogy leads to transformative change in students’ attitudes towards democracy, expands students’ sense of self-efficacy in writing and communicating on public issues, and supports students in exercising reflective, democratic control over the conditions of their education
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