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Musicking
MUSIC / CULTURE
A series from Wesleyan University Press Edited by George Lipsitz, Susan McClary, and Robert Walser
My Music by Susan D. Crafts, Daniel Cavicchi, Charles Keil, and the Music in Daily Life Project
Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music by Robert Walser
Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West by Mark Slobin
Upside Your Head! Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue by Johnny Otis
Dissonant Identities: The Rock ’n’ Roll Scene in Austin, Texas by Barry Shank
Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America by Tricia Rose
Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital by Sarah Thornton
Popular Music in Theory by Keith Negus
Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto Rican Cultures by Frances Aparicio
Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology by Paul Théberge
Voices in Bali: Energies and Perceptions in Vocal Music and Dance Theater by Edward Herbst
A Thousand Honey Creeks Later: My Life in Music from Basie to Motown—and Beyond by Preston Love
Music of the Common Tongue: Survival and Celebration in African American Music by Christopher Small
Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening by Christopher Small
Music, Society, Education by Christopher Small
Singing Archaeology: Philip Glass’s Akhnaten by John Richardson
Metal, Rock, and Jazz: Perception and the Phenomenology of Musical Experience by Harris M. Berger
Music and Cinema edited by James Buhler, Caryl Flinn, and David Neumeyer
(continued on page 231)
CHRISTOPHER SMALL
Musicking
THE MEANINGS OF
PERFORMING AND
LISTENING
Published by Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT 06459
© 1998 by Christopher Small
All rights reserved
Originally produced in 1998 by Wesleyan/
University Press of New England, Hanover, NH 03755
CIP data appear at the end of the book
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5
ISBNS for the paperback edition:
ISBN-13: 978–0–8195–2257–3
ISBN-10: 0–8195–2257–0
 |
Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper. |
Contents
2. A Thoroughly Contemporary Affair
Interlude 1 The Language of Gesture
6. Summoning Up the Dead Composer
Interlude 2 The Mother of All the Arts
Interlude 3 Socially Constructed Meanings
12. What’s Really Going On Here?
Postlude: Was It a Good Performance and How Do You Know?
Musicking
Prelude
Music and Musicking
In a concert hall, two thousand people settle in their seats, and an intense silence falls. A hundred musicians bring their instruments to the ready. The conductor raises his baton, and after a few moments the symphony begins. As the orchestra plays, each member of the audience sits alone, listening to the work of the great, dead, composer.
In a supermarket, loudspeakers fill the big space with anodyne melodies that envelop customers, checkout clerks, shelf assistants and managers, uniting them in their common