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absolutely genius book tracing the origin and development of music, but so much more - showing music as a reflection of, and a precedent for, the structure of production within society, by focussing on the relationship between music, power and money.
It takes it starting place atop Rene Girard's theory of memetic desire and the essential violence, showing musics birth and utility in the midsts of time amongst primal society and the ritualised slaughter of a scapegoat. That seemed a bit hard to swallow at first but after reading a bit more depth via wikipedia - - i could go with it.
The book describes four networks/stages of musical, and hence, societal, structures - sacrificial being the first, in which music was inscribed in ceremony and ritual, music was a very public thing and part of the background noise of life. 'Representation' is the second network structure, where music was abstracted from daily life, presented as spectacle, in concerts and private performances, where money was exchanged, charged for admission. This was reflected in society with the industrial revolution, where labour was also abstracted from ones own form of production and sold as an hourly commodity. 'Repetition' is the third network structure, and is brought about through the technology of recording, beginning with Edison's phonograph in 1877, as the commercialization of records began; this was reflected in society as a distribution of power as it dispersed throughout society, tying in well with Foucauldian ideas of power being intangible and elusive. The fourth and final stage of the musical production cycle he terms 'Compositional'. I was keen to see what examples he would give of this stage, but unfortunately the chapter is more open, more of a prediction of what is to come. He defines composition as the melding together of production and consumption, in which time and usage are not stockpiled as in repetition nor abstracted such as in representation. In composition, he presents quite a strongly optimistic view of society in which each person is personally responsible and powerful, living in the moment and taking pleasure in the act of production.
Interesting to note the book was first published in france in 1977, so i'm not sure what effect or level of knowledge he would have had of punk at that point, as he never mentions punk. It can all seem quite prescient, as the idea of a compositional network can easily be imagined as first the DIY ethos of punk which fuelled the whole 80s and spread of lo-fi noise bands and music scenes, and as technology moved into the 90s and this present decade, how the widespread adoption and cheap cost of software has enabled mass amounts of young music producers, remixers, djs. How those same ideas and technology are also shaping society and the structures of power through open source software and open data movements, ideologies of transparent government etc.
The history of copyright is also very impressively explained from original guild of copyists who were pissed at the invention of the printing press, so the law came up with the idea of "copy-right" for who could use these new printing press devices. AT first this only covered dramatic works, as music in the middle ages and into the renaissance was still very much a fluid part of society - still in its sacrificial/ritual network stage -
With the move into the Representation stage of the 1700s and 1800s and the emergence of musical stars and celebrities, we see the first musical collections society forming in 1850 - SACEM in france, to "demand, on behalf of the authors and editors, payment of royalties for every representation of a musical work, regardless of its importance". This was to collect money for the composers for their works which were being published in song books and used in mechanical playback machines, but for which the original composers were not being paid. The birth of publishing rights. As another technology breaks the existing order - the phonograph - and the move into the Repetition network stage, the musicians and publishers were upset at not being paid for recordings taken of performances, and from here the need for mechanical copyright arises.
aye, well recommended!