Sounds of the Metropolis: The 19th-Century Popular Music Revolution in London, New York, Paris, and Vienna - Hardcover

SCOTT

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195309464 ISBN 13: 9780195309461

Publisher: Academic, 2009

Synopsis

The phrase "popular music revolution" may instantly bring to mind such twentieth-century musical movements as jazz and rock 'n' roll. In Sounds of the Metropolis, however, Derek Scott argues that the first popular music revolution actually occurred in the nineteenth century, illustrating how a distinct group of popular styles first began to assert their independence and values. London, New York, Paris, and Vienna feature prominently as cities in which the challenge to the classical tradition was strongest, and in which original and influential forms of popular music arose, from Viennese waltz and polka to vaudeville and cabaret.

Scott explains the popular music revolution as driven by social changes and the incorporation of music into a system of capitalist enterprise, which ultimately resulted in a polarization between musical entertainment (or "commercial" music) and "serious" art. He focuses on the key genres and styles that precipitated musical change at that time, and that continued to have an impact upon popular music in the next century. By the end of the nineteenth century, popular music could no longer be viewed as watered down or more easily assimilated art music; it had its own characteristic techniques, forms, and devices. As Scott shows, "popular" refers here, for the first time, not only to the music's reception, but also to the presence of these specific features of style. The shift in meaning of "popular" provided critics with tools to condemn music that bore the signs of the popular-which they regarded as fashionable and facile, rather than progressive and serious.

A fresh and persuasive consideration of the genesis of popular music on its own terms, Sounds of the Metropolis will appeal to students of music, cultural sociology, and history.

About this title

Review:

this is a most informative and stimulating book, which I recommend not only to all lovers of antiquated pop music, but to everyone who has ever wondered how Western music got into its present odd state (Music and Letters)

the book has much to offer... illuminating (Rupert Christiansen, Times Literary Supplement)

About the Author:

Derek B. Scott is Professor of Critical Musicology at the University of Leeds, UK. He is the author of the The Singing Bourgeois (2nd ed, 2001), From the Erotic to the Demonic: On Critical Musicology (OUP, 2003), editor of Music, Culture and Society: A Reader (OUP 2000), and general editor of Ashgate's Popular and Folk Music Series. He has been at the forefront in identifying changes of critical perspective in music and sociology.

About this edition

• Publisher: Academic
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0195309464
• ISBN 13: 9780195309461
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 314