Overview

The Hum of the World is an invitation to contemplate what would happen if we heard the world as attentively as we see it. Balancing big ideas, playful wit and lyrical prose, this imaginative volume identifies the role of sound in Western experience as the primary medium in which the presence and persistence of life acquires tangible form. The positive experience of aliveness is not merely in accord with sound, but inaccessible, even inconceivable, without it. Lawrence Kramer’s poetic book roves freely over music, media, language, philosophy, and science from the ancient world to the present, along the way revealing how life is apprehended through sounds ranging from pandemonium to the faint background hum of the world. This warm meditation on auditory culture uncovers the knowledge and pleasure waiting when we learn that the world is alive with sound.

Full Product Details

Author:   Lawrence Kramer
Publisher:   University of California Press
Imprint:   University of California Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.80cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.363kg
ISBN:  

9780520382992

ISBN 10:   0520382994
Pages:   256
Publication Date:   22 June 2021
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock  
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Table of Contents

Prelude Sound and Knowledge The Audiable: An Introduction Some Leitmotifs The Standard of Vision A Philosophy of Listening? Constructive Description Sight, Sound, and Language The Sound of Words Seeing, Saying, and Hearing The Audiable: Variations on a Theme Music in the Air “No Sound without Music” Language and the Human Lord Bacon’s Echoes Ripple Effects: Distant Voices The Infinite Broadcast Immanence Reading Transfigured: St. Augustine To the Life: The Image Moving Pictures Modern Times: The Cartoon The Sound of Meaning Music and the Audiable: A Suite in Three Movements Plato’s Singing School Musical Synesthesia The Music of Language The Soundscape Song Noise and Silence Fish, Flesh, or Fowl Sensory Hybrids “Waiting to Be the Music” Circle Songs Forty-Part Motets The Ether Elemental Media Elemental Fluids Writing the Soundscape Haunting Melodies The Lifelike: The Undead Beyond Words? 1 The Audiable and the Audible Into Silence Enchantments of the Name The Inaudible On Saying “I am” The Shriek Metal Here Comes That Song Again The Mirror of Silence Rhythmic Hearing Media All the Way Down The Auditory Window Cacophony: Dispossession (Beckett) Euphony: Repossession (Beckett) Worldly Dissonance Sounds of Battle: The Civil War Sounds of Battle: World War I Ulysses in Auschwitz Intermezzo Sounding Bodies Pandemonium? Songs of Entropy By Hand Past and Present Consciousness Acknowledgments Index

Reviews

The Hum of the World is a more-than-intriguing read and definitely one that will get you thinking about the role of sound within a cosmic context. . . . Recommended. * Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians * An Alex Ross Bookshelf recommendation * The Rest is Noise * Summing Up: Recommended. * CHOICE *

"""Summing Up: Recommended.""  * CHOICE * An Alex Ross ""Bookshelf"" recommendation  * The Rest is Noise * ""The Hum of the World is a more-than-intriguing read and definitely one that will get you thinking about the role of sound within a cosmic context. . . . Recommended."" * Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians *"

Summing Up: Recommended. * CHOICE * An Alex Ross Bookshelf recommendation * The Rest is Noise * The Hum of the World is a more-than-intriguing read and definitely one that will get you thinking about the role of sound within a cosmic context. . . . Recommended. * Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians *

Author Information

Lawrence Kramer, Distinguished Professor of English and Music at Fordham University, is an award-winning composer and the author of fifteen previous books including The Thought of Music, winner of the 2017 ASACP Virgil Thomson Award for Outstanding Music Criticism.  

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