Authenticity and Interpretation

By: Andrew Dell’Antonio (The University of Texas at Austin) // Humans are often fascinated by the origins of their traditions. If only we could travel back in time, we might reach an “authentic” instance of a tradition, before it was “corrupted” by outside influences. Fans of American “roots music,” for instance, praise it as an …

Writing, Memory, and Music: The Birth of Notation

From Capturing Music: The Story of Notation by Thomas Forrest Kelly (W. W. Norton & Company, 2014) // The air around us is filled with sounds. Some are annoying, some are pleasing, and some provide us with information we need. Noise, music, language—what they have in common is that they happen in real time. The …