SONIC DESIGN: THE NATURE OF SOUND AND MUSIC

by ROBERT COGAN and POZZI ESCOT

PRENTICE-HALL, INC. MAY 1976 

Sonic Design - an innovative formulation of music theory and teaching that is rooted in the scientific analysis of sound and communications. SONIC DESIGN defines central concepts and categories appropriate not merely to a single period or culture, but rather to a broad sweep of musical composition ­ranging from ancient China and India to living composers of Europe and America.

The text establishes four principle perspectives - musical, space, language, time and color - and views a variety of works in terms of these perspectives. It forms a framework for understanding the entire art of sound.

Clearly written, the book leads students from the very beginnings of mu­sical perception to serious questions of music's structure and communication. Numerous in-text aids include: discussion questions, 200 musical examples, 60 graphs of musical and psychophysical analysis, photographs of art works and graphic notations and reading lists.

The Foreword is written by Elliott Carter.

ABOUT THE CONTENTS

The text presents the science of sound in a language comprehensible to music students, with special emphasis on aspects relevant to the understand­ing of music. The musical analyses cover, in addition to music of China, India, the American Indians and Gregorian Chant, complete phrase sections or movements by: Machaut, Josquin des Prez, Lassus, J.S. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Brahms, Mussorgsky, Mahler, Debussy, Schoenberg, Ives, Bartok, Stravinsky, Webern, Dallapiccola, Messiaen, Carter, Cage, Babbitt and Boulez.

Chapter One develops concepts of musical space, including line, register and field.

Chapter Two makes available the cur­rent conceptions of musical languages as communications systems that explore the potentialities of their basic note collections. Four European language systems - the modal: consonance - dissonance: tonal: and twelve-tone are examined. Comparison is made with the raga systems of India.

Chapter Three examines time and rhythm as a hierarchy of levels, ranging in scale from the briefest note or silence to the largest dimensions of musical works. It includes an introduction to psychophysical time. Twentieth-century developments are explored: pulse complexes; beat modulation, serialization, palindromes, statistical activity and open time fields.

Chapter Four develops. for the first time, an analytical theory of tone color. Beginning with the psychophysical analysis of sound, the roles of register, spectra, envelope, dynamics, tone modulation, and interference phenomena are described, as well as analyzed in musical contexts.

The last chapter, musical structure, is conceived as the coordinated unfolding of processes of space, language, time and color. Analysis of works from sources as diverse as the Zuni Indians and Arnold Schoenberg reveal the nature of music's structural coordination. For each chapter, beginning of section questions motivate students to compare their own understanding of the music discussed with that of the authors.