This chapter offers a subject-specific overview to guide musicologists through some of the challenges and opportunities presented by knowledge exchange (KE) work. It explains two core beliefs: that scholarship about and policy surrounding KE, often centring STEM, causes difficulties for musicologists and especially those employed by non-traditional research institutions, for example conservatoires. And that while awareness of such policies can be beneficial, KE practices stand the best chance of succeeding when they focus on the nature and quality of the connections musicologists can make with communities and industries, rather than replicating commercial ideologies. The chapter therefore continues by chronicling the barriers and challenges musicologists face in the field. It then examines two theoretical strands from the KE literature, epistemologies and evaluation practices, that may offer alternative ways of thinking and doing. Determining the success of music-centred KE projects is fraught with logistical and ideological difficulties.

A city is a particular kind of place, perhaps best described as many worlds in one place. As modes of engagement charged with emotion and imagination, composition and sound design are valuable tools in navigating these real-life borders and facilitate the delicate and complex task of building trust with vulnerable participants. The manifestation of tensions and intimacies within the collective composition process serves as a stark reminder that social collaboration is not a 'clean' process, but rather a messy way of 'being entangled with communities'. Aspiring to an 'authentic' representation of the participants' ideas was central to the project. To evaluate this, the author adopted Steven Feld's process of dialogic editing to structure a workshop before the public performances. We need to embrace the good work they do as sites of social and cultural encounter; facilitating dialogues of knowledge production and sharing between participants and leaders, and participants and the wider community through the actual and intimate making of art.

This article advocates for an approach to evaluation for participatory arts that privileges creative risk-taking into their design and considers some of the leaps of knowledge and discovery that can ensue when they are embraced and encouraged by the research team. By examining the methods used to research the London-based participatory project Unleashed (Barbican Centre, 2012), it considers how a creative, durational approach to research and evaluation methods might support the leaps in knowledge that result from moments of "failure" or "decomposition" (Hughes et al. 2011), and in turn, paint a clearer and more detailed picture of the modes of disruption that sit at the heart of the practice. This paper reflects on the narrative of social inclusion set forth by recent UK governments and cultural policy agendas in which critical reflection is often challenging.

Reviewed by: Good Music: What It Is and Who Gets to Decide by John J. Sheinbaum Toby Young Good Music: What It Is and Who Gets to Decide. By John J. Sheinbaum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. [xiii, 289 p. ISBN 9780226593241 (hardcover), $99; ISBN 9780226593388 (paperback), $32; ISBN 9780226593418 (e-book), $31.99.] Illustrations, bibliography, index. At a time of profound critical reflection within musical academia triggered in response to the major political movements of #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, a book aiming to disrupt our engrained narratives of taste and value should be a very good thing. As both scholars and practitioners alike relocate labor into redressing historical and systemic imbalances in the industry, seeking to decolonize the canon by diversifying both repertory and modes of study, the power and agency of cultural gatekeepers in the validation of communities of taste (to use a Kantism) has never been clearer or more contentious. John J. Sheinbaum, in Good Music, attempts to do this by dismantling what he terms "traditional models for valuing music" (p. 1) through a series of seven chapters, each focused on a specific historicoaesthetic conception: Serious, Unified, Deep, Authentic, Heroic, Original, and Connected. For example, in the first chapter we are presented with a series of challenges to thinkers known for their hierarchization of music into "high" and "low," which Sheinbaum repudiates through specific exemplars (Bruce Springsteen's song "Lonesome Day" and Duke Ellington's Concerto for Cootie) to demonstrate popular music's ability to employ a formal sophistication typically associated with "higher" genres of music. Sheinbaum's writing style is incredibly affable and enjoyable to read. It is of particular value to this book that the author is able to skip through the dense and well-trodden paths of secondary literature (Theodor Adorno, Lawrence Kramer, Lydia Goehr, etc.) with a light-footed grace, but occasionally this ease denies us a more complex engagement with the source texts. For instance, progressive (or "prog") rock's "Adornian" value is evidenced, for Sheinbaum, through an imitation of late-period Beethoven in its "authentic artistic endeavor, of interacting critically with the changing culture and the music industry that functions within it . . . rather than merely constituting [End Page 576] an abandonment of countercultural and related musical concerns" (p. 141). In Adorno's readings, Beethoven's revolutionary breakaway from bourgeois ideals is not merely "good" because of its escape from social convention but because it illuminated "the schema of complaisant adequacy of music and society" (Theodor Adorno, Introduction to the Sociology of Music, trans. E. B. Ashton [New York: Seabury, 1976], 209)—termed "identity thinking"—which revealed the philosophical manifestation of power and domination. The more subtle negotiation of "simple" and "complex" elements that Sheinbaum writes so eloquently about in prog rock work very differently from the fundamental rupture that Adorno illuminates in the late works of Beethoven being used as a point of comparison here. Sheinbaum is in effect conflating two separate Adornian arguments: first, that the relationship between autonomy and commodity is fluid and subtle, existing reciprocally between the arts and society; and second, that value was afforded to Beethoven for a specific form of rupture (in this case, of the Hegelian ideal of art entering the empirical world in order to change it). Crucially, Adorno is clear that the latter mode of emancipatory value is simply not possible within our present social conditions (Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997], 169), and central to his negative dialectic was a fundamental belief that music can no longer simply claim autonomy by "escaping" the commodity system of social and economic values in the manner of classical Marxism. In other words, the formal complexity, sonic dissonance, and lyrical density of prog rock cannot be argued as holding radical values of autonomy simply because they present themselves as opposed to vernacular social aesthetics, considering that music's sonic pleasure and commodity reproduction still positions this within social entertainment. Where this book is at its best is in Sheinbaum's perceptive and evocative readings of specific musical works—like his critique of unity as a mode of engagement with the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or...

Portrayals of sexualized narratives are rife in ethnographic accounts of Electronic Dance Music (EDM), where the visceral musical and haptic experiences of dancing to club music are intertwined in a tantalizing symbiosis. This is music that is habitually understood through erotic semiosis: protracted build ups of stimulation and intensity, layer upon layer of musical repetition being added in service of arousal, and a teasing denial of harmonic and sonic resolution are expanded and amplified, until there is a final fulfilment granted by the DJ at the moment of the “drop”. Bringing together musicological discussions of climax with socio-psychological and neurological research on the orgasm, this article explores the manifold ways in which technologies of arousal in dance music mediate the sexual space of the dancefloor and consider how metaphors of pleasure and fulfilment are actualised in EDM in ways which destabilise the prevalent body of heteronormative, male-focussed narratives around stimulation and arousal.

modernity and re-question cultural differences, authenticities, and imaginations in relationships within the East, within the South, and between (inter)Asia and the Global. It can be read that the contributors to this essay collection not only concentrate on the pedagogic force and aesthetic practices of the mainstream/large media, but also retell the normalisation of hierarchies of power and media politics through grassroots video cultural productions. This is evident across the range of contexts under discussion, from the censorship of Bollywood films in Nigeria to microcinema (Wei dianying) in trans-Chinese screen practices, from ‘mainstream’ TV documentaries in ‘multicultural’ Taiwan society to independent/grassroots Chinese documentary filmmaking in Mainland China, from the new social media in Indonesia to video platforms in Japan, or from global Korean-pop reception videos to India’s HIV/AIDS video culture. In this case, the notion of ‘penumbral capacities’ takes Asian video cultures as more than cultural/media representations, more than representational modes of cultural mediation; instead, they are seen to embody the re-circulation of Asia’s social, political, cultural and global capacities in postcolonial critique and the understanding of subaltern studies.

Illustrated by screen grabs, stills of Hayes 2007 performance in New York, in addition to installations and generative digital montage by Thomas & Craighead, the text could arguably have benefited from further discussion of the visual as a site of legitimate analysis. Engaging with pertinent visual works, the text includes the hugely appropriate 2012 piece by Thomas & Craighead, ‘A Live Portrait of Tim Berners-Lee’, the inventor in 1989 of the World Wide Web from 2012.

Reviewed by: The Courage of Composers and the Tyranny of Taste: Reflections on New Music by Bálint András Varga Toby Young The Courage of Composers and the Tyranny of Taste: Reflections on New Music. By Bálint András Varga. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2017. [viii, 263 p. ISBN 9781580465939 (hardback), $34.95; ISBN 9781787440043 (e-book), $24.99; ISBN 9781787440012 (e-book for handhelds), $24.99.] Index. Courage is an interesting word, connoting an internal strength in the face of severe trauma. Such bravery is traditionally an attribute of "good character," evident in numerous heroes' tales, ranging from ancient myths to Holly-wood movies, that laud courage and self-sacrifice for the greater good. With the notable exception of composers working under political persecution in the traditional sense—for instance, those oppressed by tyrannical state regimes—such subjugation is perhaps not immediately synonymous with the seemingly privileged world of new music. In this intriguing collection of interviews, Bálint András Varga wants us to be convinced of just this: that the modern craft of composition is not a socially indifferent and protected act but instead is symbiotically linked to pressures of external regimes. These pressures may be life threatening or rank as less physically harmful (but with a potential nevertheless to cause severe psychologically damage). Serious concerns over issues of taste, judgment, and public criticism also require an innate courage to put pen to paper. Those familiar with Varga's highly influential and widely cited Three Questions for Sixty-Five Composers (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2011) will know that he is an interviewer of great skill and is extremely well connected in the new-music world. This volume continues the excellent work of Three Questions, offering carefully scripted interviews with thirty-three composers from around the globe. An impressive number of these composers are household names (at least among new-music-loving households): John Adams, George Benjamin, George Crumb, Sofia Gubaidulina, György Kurtág, and Helmut Lachenmann. Alongside these are five other influential programmers and theorists, including Arnold Whittall, a renowned academic and critic, and Nicholas Kenyon, managing director of the Barbican Centre in London and past [End Page 293] director of the influential British music festival the BBC Proms. While the length and style of each contribution varies substantially—ranging from brief emailed testimonies to extensive and in-depth conversations transcribed from tape recordings—all are tied together by Varga's careful curation. Though he poses only one or two central questions (albeit in different ways), it is quite remarkable that every response offers something new and individual to the conversation, with a noticeable lack of repetition from these composers. Several sorts of "courage" emerge across the responses, but the main type—and perhaps the most concerning for the composers featured in this book (certainly the most substantially discussed)—might loosely be described as the courage to be authentic in the face of external expectations. At the core seems to sit an old, well-worn dialectic: whether to challenge audiences' expectations in order to explore new aesthetic areas in the service of intellectual stimulation, or to appease general sensibilities with "moving" artworks whose utterances are perhaps more akin to a music vernacular than a niche dialect. Such a discussion is as much a challenge to personal integrity as it is to the very identity of the composer in society, who might be simultaneously an artist of creative depth and a purveyor of music for entertainment or other utility. In chapter 13, Detlev Glanert calls for composers to fight the cultural pressures to abandon their struggle to produce autonomous art rather than simply serving as a provider of arts and crafts material. As noted in Karl Aage Rasmussen's interview (which incidentally sparks the whole notion of a "tyranny of taste" for Varga), John Cage's reticence at disclosing his infamous 4′33″ was "not because of artistic worries, but because of his fear that it would appear to be 'a joke'" (p. 162). It is perhaps inevitable that such a discussion brings to mind the regimes of censorship experienced by composers in the Soviet Bloc, where judgment of this was...

Nancy K. Baym, Playing to the Crowd: Musicians, Audiences, and the Intimate Work of Connection (New York: New York University Press, 2018), ISBN 978-1-479-89616-5 (hb), 978-1-47982-158-7 (pb). - David Grubbs, Now That the Audience is Assembled (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), ISBN 978-0-822-37138-0 (hb), 978-0-822-37147-2 (pb). - Volume 16 Issue 2

‘rhombic reversals’ (220) space for a ‘third term’ beyond binary modellings. Example for such an eliciting third space is given in a contemporary beer ad. The emerging meaning hints at colonialism, which, although named, is left aside. This is mentioned here rather as a reminder that our culture ‘of self-absorbed antagonism’ (220) is manifested in the very language, thought and design patterns, which the book attempts to rupture.

Reviewed by: The Thought of Music by Lawrence Kramer Toby Young The Thought of Music. By Lawrence Kramer. California: University of California Press, 2016. [xviii, 224 p. ISBN 9780520288799 (hardcover). $70; ISBN 9780520288805 (paperback). $34.95.] Music examples, bibliography, index. “It’s disgraceful,” said Donald Trump of a piece of sculpture modelled on him, “[that] they take your tax dollars to make this filth” (Philip Kennicott, “Would Donald Trump Make Art Great Again?,” Washington Post, August 19, 2016 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/would-donald-trump-make-art-great-again/2016/08/17/0c7300a2-60d1-11e6-af8e-54aa2e849447_story.html; accessed 5 January 2017). It is no secret that in today’s society there is a constant fear of the arts being undervalued and side-lined. This threat seems all the more ominous given the recent victory of Trump—a man who is known for deriding artists as being “lazy” or “losers”—as President-Elect (ibid.). It is in light of these circumstances that Lawrence Kramer’s recent book The Thought of Music (2016)—an epistemic study into the essence (and as such, the worth) of music—seems so utterly important. The Thought of Music forms the last part of Kramer’s epic trilogy on hermeneutics, which also includes Interpreting Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010) and Expression and Truth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012). This series seeks to challenge models of music as inexpressible and to search for a new vocabulary to describe the multitude of ways in which music communicates. Kramer, a veritable elder statesman of (New) Musicology, approaches this monumental task with trademark flair and precision. He casts this book in seven chapters, the first three of which discuss issues of representation and language. The central fourth chapter explores the relationship between pleasure, entertainment, and value, and the final three chapters discuss extra-musical elements including context, authorship and performance. Unusually perhaps for New Musicology, there is a strong undertone here of an almost Adornian desire to seek objective meaning in the music, although such a desire is tempered by the main body of the book, which unpacks and extends the well-rehearsed argument of musical meaning as subjective, imparted by the broader sociocultural context of musicking rather than from the music itself (see for example Nicholas Cook, Beyond the Score: Music as Performance [New York: Ox ford University Press, 2013], 30–37). There is a lot to like in Kramer’s book. Particularly compelling is his discussion of the relationship between language, perception, and cultural expectation. Drawing on the work of Jacques Derrida, Kramer dedicates a substantial amount of space to a detailed discussion of the nature of music’s perceived ineffability, positing that the sociocultural context of the music “opens up” the ability of music to express linguistically (compare this with Kofi Agawu’s seminal work on the relationship or “play” between introversive and extroversive levels in Playing with Signs [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991], 12–25). Discussions like this form the basis of a powerful central chapter that examines the sensory force of music. In this chapter, Kramer masterfully balances discussions of beauty, desire (via Jacques Lacan), pleasure, and gratification, concluding that David Hume’s notion of “reason as the servant of passion” is still, to some extent, useful (pp. 74–5), and drives the formation of the multiple sensations of pleasure that music (and particularly musical narrative) offers (pp. 85–7). Work like this on musical sensation is still underrepresented in both musicology and philosophy, and it would be particularly interesting to see Kramer’s discussions extended into the realm of non-Western and popular music. [End Page 710] Central to many of Kramer’s arguments here are analyses—or perhaps “close readings”—of canonical works of Western art music, including pieces by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Frédéric Chopin, and Franz Liszt. This typifies Kramer’s trademark approach of thinking “through” the music and certainly provides a rich palette to contextualise the more subjective elements of the discussion. One such example is the opening of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky’s first Piano Concerto, which becomes the focus of an illuminating discussion on belonging. Kramer concentrates on two areas, the unsettled D♭ introduction...

Love Saves the Day adopted a chronological approach to East Coast disco's dramatic arc through the 1970s.Then his follow-up Hold On to Your Dreams widened the timeline, honing in on a valuable contributor to New York's downtown music scene-cellist and composer Arthur Russell.While LStD ranged widely across many spaces, DJs, artists, assorted characters and issues, the Russell biography was an intimate portrait of a key player, who died from AIDS-related complications in 1992.Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor 1980-1983 (henceforth Life and Death) is the third segment in Lawrence's New York project.Now he narrows the timeline and brings a forensic examination to just four years in the party scene.On the title, Lawrence explains, "the reference to life is intended to evoke the way that New York party culture didn't merely survive the hyped death of disco but positively flourished in its wake".And he clearly and convincingly argues that the short period was one characterised by a stirring artistic ferment, across music, art, dance and club space innovation.Lawrence explains: "instead of depicting the 1980-1983 period as a mere bridge that connected the big genre stories of 1970s disco and 1980s house and techno, I submitted to its kaleidoscope logic, took my foot off the historical metronome, and decided to take it-the book-to the bridge" (ix).His excavation uses all available sources to bulk out the progression through the years across a variety of intersections, downtown and uptown; legal locations such as clubs and galleries, to homes, disused industrial spaces, drilled DJs to first comers, established genres such as disco and R&B and the fresh fusions, collisions and cross pollinations garnered from a quintessentially New York DIY outlook pickled by new keyboard and synthesizer, Reviews