Listen
Did you ever listen to Hindustani Dhrupad music, a Gisalo from Papua New Guinea or the chants of the Blackfoot people? Does it mean anything to you to listen to a piece of music that lasts 639 years? Followed by the noise experiments of Maso Yamazaki? Or do you think that this is not music?
A very interesting read for those who want to clean out their preprogrammed ears!Klara
In this book, Tomas Serrien tries to find out why we prefer to listen to sounds that sound familiar to us. He uses a wide range of musical pieces and bundles them in easy accessible online playlists (all of which add up to more than 130 hours of music). In this way, the author gives the reader the opportunity to discover how certain expectations are influencing our musical experiences. By embracing this musical adventure, Tomas Serrien hopes that the reader learns to listen differently to music that was previously thought of as ‘disturbing’, ‘silent’, ‘strange’, ‘plagiarized’, ‘noisy’, ‘boring’, ‘ugly’, ‘uneasy’ or ‘exotic’.
Drawing on the latest insights of music philosophy, he aims to show how biological patterns, cultural norms and prejudices intervene in our preference for certain types of music.
This book contains a wealth of sounds and thoughts that will help you better understand what it means to experience the richness of music.
The day after the premiere of Schoenberg’s second string quartet, a critic wrote that the performance had hurt his ears. Nonsense, according to philosopher Theodor Adorno. According to him, the composer had shown how stuck the Viennese bourgeoisie was in its narrow-minded capitalist culture.Knack Magazine
Schoenberg had shown a way to freedom. You could say the same of the new book by Tomas Serrien. Anyone who reads it and listens to the playlists will become another human being.Knack magazine
