Over and Over: Exploring Repetition in Popular Music

by Olivier Julien (Editor), Christophe Levaux (Editor)

Overview

From the Tin Pan Alley 32-bar form, through the cyclical forms of modal jazz, to the more recent accumulation of digital layers, beats, and breaks in Electronic Dance Music, repetition as both an aesthetic disposition and a formal property has stimulated a diverse range of genres and techniques. From the angles of musicology, psychology, sociology, and science and technology, Over and Over reassesses the complexity connected to notions of repetition in a variety of musical genres.

The first edited volume on repetition in 20th- and 21st-century popular music, Over and Over explores the wide-ranging forms and use of repetition - from large repetitive structures to micro repetitions - in relation to both specific and large-scale issues and contexts. The book brings together a selection of original texts by leading authors in a field that is, as yet, little explored. Aimed at both specialists and neophytes, it sheds important new light on one of the fundamental phenomena of music of our times.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501324901
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	02/22/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	975,571
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Olivier Julien is a lecturer in the history and musicology of popular music at Paris-Sorbonne University, France.

Christophe Levaux is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Liège, Belgium.
Olivier Julien is Associate Professor at Sorbonne Université, France, where he teaches the history and musicology of popular music. A permanent member of the IReMus research group (Sorbonne Université/CNRS) and a member of the editorial board of Volume! La revue des musiques populaires, he is the editor of Sgt. Pepper and the Beatles: It Was Forty Years Ago Today (2009 ARSC Award for Best Research in Recorded Rock and Popular Music) and Over and Over: Exploring Repetition in Popular Music (with Christophe Levaux, Bloomsbury, 2018).
Christophe Levaux was born in Brussels in 1982. He holds two Masters' degrees from the University of Liege: one in musicology and one in general management. He participated in the French Community of Belgium's Patrimoine Musical Numérique programme and has worked for the classical radio station Musiq'3 (RTBF). He is currently completing a PhD thesis on the construction of the concept of minimal music which explores methodological interconnections between musicology and science and technology studies.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations and Contractions
List of Musical Examples, Figures, and Tables
Acknowledgements
List of Contributors

Preface
Antoine Hennion (Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation, France)

Introduction: Play It Again (and Again), Sam
Olivier Julien (Paris-Sorbonne University, France) and Christophe Levaux (University of Liège, Belgium)

Part I: Repetition as an aesthetic disposition
1. When the Music stutters: Notes toward a Symptomatology
Robert Fink (University of California, Los Angeles, Herb Alpert School of Music, USA)
2. Time and Time Again: Repetition and Difference in Repetitive Music
Anne Danielsen (University of Oslo, Norway)
3. Towards an Alternative History of Repetitive Audio Technologies
Christophe Levaux (University of Liège, Belgium)

Part II: Issues of perception
4. Loops, Memories and Meanings
Chris Cutler (Independent Scholar)
5. Machine Possession: Dancing to Repetitive Beats
Hillegonda C. Rietveld (London South Bank University, UK)
6. Repetition and Musical Meaning: Anaphonic Perspective in Connection with the Sonic Experience of Everyday Life
Danick Trottier (Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada)

Part III: Repetition as a structuring device
7. From “Sectional Refrains” to Repeated Verses: The Rise of the AABA Form
Olivier Julien (Paris-Sorbonne University, France)
8. Standard Jazz Harmony and the Constraints of Hypermeter: Some Thoughts on Regular and Irregular Repetition
Keith Salley (The Shenandoah Conservatory, USA) and Daniel T. Shanahan (Louisiana State University, USA)
9. A Psychological Perspective on Repetition in Popular Music
Trevor de Clercq (Middle Tennessee State University, USA) and Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis (University of Arkansas, USA)

References
Index

Editorial Reviews

A critically important work of outstanding collective scholarship … Very highly recommended for college and university library Musicology collections.” —The Midwest Book Review

“[Richard] Middleton's core assertion-that repetition is productive and creative, that it adds meaning and is worthy of analysis-guides a dizzying array of responses from the contributors.” —The Wire

“The various contributors present convincing readings of their chosen areas of focus … On the whole this is a useful and much needed addition to the literature.” —Popular Music

“Scholars, students, and musical practitioners will welcome this fine collection, which brings together both luminaries and exciting newer voices to investigate repetition in popular music. Offering insights from a broad range of disciplines and methodologies, Over and Over will serve as an indispensable guide to understanding one of the most debated and misunderstood aspects of the art.” —Mark Katz, Professor of Music, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

“An important musicological collection that addresses repetition head-on … The editors are to be commended for opening (perhaps reopening) the debate on repetition, directing attention to this matter most intricate and integral to so much music.” —Steven Gamble, Analitica - Rivista online di Studi Musicali

“A concise, provocative, and engaging collection of essays exploring one of the most pleasurable (and most maligned) characteristics of music. From stutters to loops, and compositional forms to cutting and pasting, the authors cover a range of approaches and perspectives to enrich our understanding of musical repetition.” —Matt Brennan, Chancellor's Fellow of Music, University of Edinburgh, UK

“What is repetition in music? A stutter. What is repetition in music? A technique. What is repetition in music? A changing same. What is repetition in music? A form, a necessity. What is repetition in music? A place to lose yourself, the world. What? What is - what is - repetition in music? Read over Over and Over, over and over, to find out.” —Benjamin Piekut, Associate Professor of Music, Cornell University, USA

From the Publisher