"MAXIMUM CLARITY" AND OTHER WRITINGS ON MUSICDescribed by New York Times critic John Rockwell as “one of the best non-famous composers this country has to offer,” Ben Johnston reconceives familiar idioms--ranging from jazz to Southern hymns--using just intonation. Johnston studied with Darius Milhaud, Harry Partch, and John Cage, and is best known for his String Quartet No. 4, a complex series of variations on Amazing Grace. This volume reveals he is also a truly literate composer, who writes and speaks about music with eloquence and charm. “Maximum Clarity” and Other Writings on Music spans forty years and brings together forty-one of Johnston’s most important writings, including many rare and several previously unpublished selections. They include position papers, theoretical treatises, program notes, historical reflections, lectures, excerpts from interviews, and letters, and they cover a broad spectrum of concerns--from the technical exegesis of microtonality to the personal and the broadly humanistic. The volume concludes with a discography of all commercially available recordings of Johnston’s music. |
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Contents
II ON MUSICAL AESTHETICS AND CULTURE | 89 |
III SOME COMPOSITIONS | 181 |
IV ON OTHER COMPOSERS | 209 |
Notes on Sources | 259 |
| 263 | |
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Common terms and phrases
acoustical adjacency ratios aesthetic American artistic audience avant-garde basic Ben Johnston Cage’s Carmilla century chord chromatic chromatic scale complex composers composition consonance consonance and dissonance context culture cycles cyclic definite derived diatonic diatonic scale difficult dissonance duration electronic emotional ensemble equal temperament European extended just intonation find first fixed flat harmonic Harry Partch inflection influence instruments intervals John Cage Johnston kind La Monte Young lattice listener major third mathematical means melodic metrical Microtonal Piano minor movement music theory musicians notation notes octave one’s orchestra organization overtone series patterns perception perfect fifth perfect fourth performance pitch relations pitch system possible practice prime number problem proportional Pythagorean ratio scale Records reflects relationships rhythm rhythmic scalar order Schoenberg serial significance Sonata sound specific String Quartet sufficiently symbol syntonic comma techniques tempo tion tonal tone tonic tradition triad triadic tuning twelve-tone University of Illinois vibration Western music
Bibliographic information
| Title | "MAXIMUM CLARITY" AND OTHER WRITINGS ON MUSIC Music in American Life |
| Author | Ben Johnston |
| Editor | Ben Gilmore |
| Publisher | University of Illinois Press, 2010 |
| ISBN | 0252091574, 9780252091575 |
| Length | 328 pages |
| Subjects | › Biography & Autobiography / General Biography & Autobiography / Music |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |