[NewMusic] Essential texts?

[Matthew Goodheart]

Lot of good writings mentioned; although I guess it depends on what you 
mean by "this" music. I'd also put out there:

Source texts:
The liner notes to Unit Structures - Cecil Taylor, which I'd also 
recommend read with it's influences:
          Projective Verse - Charles Olsen; Toward and Open Universe - 
Robert Duncan
	Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth - Nag Hammadi texts (This would have 
been a later influence, particularly on Taylor's Calling It the Eighth)
The Harmony of the Spheres- A Source Book for the Pythagorean Tradition 
in Music - Ed. Joscelyn Godwin
       ( all the great stuff from Plato through the Enlightenment)
L'Arte Dei Rumori - Luigi Russolo
Software for People - Pauline Oliveros

History and commentary:
New Musical Figurations - Ronald Radano
John Coltrane and the Jazz Revolution of the 1960's - Frank Kofsky
Noise - Jaque Attali
Prisms - Theodor Adorno

Theory:
Harmonic Experience - W.A. Mathieu (Despite the New-Agey presentation, 
still the best book on acoustics and tonal theory)
Meta Hodos and Meta Meta Hodos - James Tenney
Feminine Endings - Susan McClary
The Society of the Spectical - Guy DeBord

Also important for me in a roundabout way:
The Social and Religious Designs of Bach's Brandenburg Concerti - 
Michael Marissen
       What the hell, you ask? Well, the deep analysis of the scoring, 
melodic and harmonic content, and structure shows how deeply embedded 
these things are in the culture that produced them, and gives us a 
small indication of the meaning that these works MAY have had to the 
folks that heard and produced them. It's not a very far step to look at 
music today in the same way. . .

And of course:
I Hate the Man who Runs This Bar - Eugene Chadbourne




>> music? A couple that pop to mind for me are the "Arcana" anthology
>> edited by John Zorn and Cage's "Silence".
>
> this is a highly subjective matter. a sampling of my music related
> bookshelf:
>
> as serious as your life - valerie wilmer
> trackings - richard dufallo
> forces in motion - graham lock
> free jazz - ekkehard jost
> from the velvets to the voidoids - clinton heylin
> the freedom principle - john litweiler
> 4 lives in the bebop business - a.b. spellman
> american hardcore
> structural functions of harmony - schoenburg
> the technique of my musical language - messiaen
> the black giants
> black music - leroi jones
> sonic transports - cole gagne
> genesis of a music - harry partch
> formalized music - iannis xenakis
> psychotic reactions and carburetor dung - lester bangs
> non-western music and the western listener
> lords of chaos
> trouser press record guide
> lunar notes - bill harkleroad
> whitehouse compendium
> rationalizing culture - georgie born
> frank zappa-the negative dialectics of poodle play - ben watson
> throbbing gristle-wreckers of civilization - simon ford
> american pioneers: from ives to cage and beyond
>
> scores:
>
> stravinsky - rite of spring, requiem canticles
> copeland - connotations for orchestra
> messiaen - sept haikai, l'ascension
> boulez - le marteau sans maitre
> varese - hyperprism, ionisation
> stockhausen - zeitmasse
> penderecki - threnody
> webern - string trio op. 20
> xenakis - akrata, eonta, charisma, analogique 'a', mikka, st-4
> carter - double concerto for harpsichord and piano
> bartok - string quartets
>
> i downloaded all this stuff into a follicle of hair and i watch it with
> my dna goggles when i'm whippersnapping.
>
> ww
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