Ongoing
projects
A
short prehistory of Western music. Chapter 3 — Riverine civilisations
[PDF, 40 pp. 1197k | HTML dummy
235k] • Ancient Egypt • Mesopotamia • Ancient China •
Bibliography chapters 1-3 [upd. May 2002],
Tagg’s
Harmony Handout [upd. Oct 2003; 583k PDF]. Includes articles on
Polyphony, Chord(s),
Counterpoint, Homophony,
Heterophony, Harmony,
Lead sheet , Lead
sheet chord shorthand, Turnaround,
Circle of fifths. The Harmony
article includes sections on ‘Classical’ and ‘Non-classical’
harmony. It also sorts out the confusion of terms like triadic, tertial,
quartal, ‘functional’, etc. Now all included and expanded in Everyday
Tonality.
2012-2010
Tagg's Tonal Terminology Tour Diary (2012-02-22) My unacademically written academic gig tour diary. Reactions I’ve recently received from different people in different institutions reveal a lot about the state of music studies among different types of academic audience. With reactions ranging from elitist disdain and outright boycott via strong objections, epistemic discomfort, partial scepticism, all the way through to intellectual relief, gratitude and enthusiasm, I feel I must be doing something right.
Unsystematic notes about vocal persona sources (16 Jan 2012) Unformatted, ad hoc notes from online searches about voice, vocal persona, vocal personality, etc.; in raw text format (*.txt).
Trouble with Tonal Terminology. Article submitted 2011-12-06 for publication in Festschrift for Coriún Aharonián and Graciela Paraskevaidis. [HTML dummy].
Caught on the Back Foot: epistemic inertia and visible music (keynote presentation, IASPM 16th Biennial Conference, Grahamstown, 2011-06-27). [HTML dummy]
Music, Moving Image and the "Missing Majority": how vernacular media competence can help music studies move into the digital era. Text accompanying keynote address at conference Music & The Moving Image,
2011-05-21, Steinhardt School, New York University [HTML dummy 61k]
Musicology and the Silent Majority in the Digital Era. Abstract of lectures to be held in Oslo and Kristiansand, January 31-Feb 1 2011 (raw text only)
La
película del libro de la música/The film of the book of the
music. Sobre la necessidad de repensar las maneras de explicar el significado
musical.On the neceesity of rethinking ways of explaining musical
meaning. Texto incluido en la ponencia presentada en el sptimo congreso
de la IASPM-AL, La Habana, junio de 2006. I am unable to find the English
original of this text translated into Spanish by Marta Garcia. This version
is therefore 65% in Spanish and 35% in English. It will appear entirely
in Spanish in the Actas of IASPM-AL's Havana conference and I will try soon
to translate Marta’s Spanish back into English. Using Lakoff’s
notion of functional embodiment, I argue that awareness of music’s
semiotic functions in contemporary media cannot be generated through mere
verbal deconstruction or theorising. If important theoretical or ideological
lessons are to be learnt… they must be rooted in knowledge intrinsic
to the modes of perception under investigation. Footage produced and discussed:
Intel Inside, Atomic Power Montage and Breakfast at Ibotirama
(Fernando the Flute, Chapter 1). Click
here to access those clips. PDF 490k. Dummy
HTML.
2005
2004
Film
music, antidepressants and anguish management. Slightly reworked version
of next paper on list. Done for a volume edited by Jochen Eisentraut (Bangor,
Wales). [html dummy 48k; correct
pdf version 330k incl. notated music examples].
Para
que serve um musema? Antidepressivos e a gestão musical da angústia
Conferência Philip Tagg, Universidade de Montral V Congresso da IASPM-LA,
Rio de Janeiro, 22 de Junho de 2004. Tradução preliminar (Henrique Wesley).
Para
qué sirve un musema? Antidepresivos y la gestóin musical de la angustia
Conferencia Philip Tagg, Universidade de Montral. V Congresso da IASPM-LA,
Ro de Janeiro, 22 de Junio de 2004 Traducci-on preliminar (Antonio Moreno)
Antidepressants
and musical anguish management. Keynote speech, IASPM Latin America
conference, Rio de Janeiro, June 2004. [html
70k with short MP3 links; pdf
version 169k incl. notated music examples]. Em
português | En
español .
Mostrar
lo extraa que es la normalidad (‘Normality is so weird’).
Existe una definición positiva de música popular? Cuál
la utilidad del análisis musical?Qué lugar tiene la autenticidad
como juicio de valor?
Qué papel podra cumplir un tipo de subversión que actuara
en la música misma, una especie de boicot de la normalidad en la música
popular? (Entrevista por
Guilherme Alencar de Pinto, Uruguay, 2004-07-12. Published in Brecha
(Montevideo), Friday 30 July 2004 [html 21k]
2003
Ten
Little Title Tunes — Towards a musicology of the mass media,
co-authored by
Bob Clarida
(xiv+898 pp., ISBN 0-9701684-2-X, 10" x 7" = 177 x 254 mm., 501 music examples.,
numerous illustrations, tables and figures). Ten Little Title Tunes
is about the importance of music as an everyday means of communication. It
documents the associations of hundreds of respondents to ten extracts of music,
played without visual accompaniment, but used (or usable) as film or TV title
music. It deals with the links between listener connotations and musical structures
in the global, Anglo-US-American mass-media culture of the late twentieth
century, analysing musicogenic categories of thought which own serious ideological
potential, e,g, gender, love, loneliness, injustice, nostalgia, sadness, exoticsm,
nature, crime, normality, urgency, fashion, fun, the military, etc. Specimen extracts: from analyses of The Dream of Olwen and of The Virginian; the final chapter on Title Tune and Gender (all); the Table of Contents (all); the end tables;
Inlay for CD Hearing the
Detectives (1999) • A4
[PDF] • US
Letter [PDF]
2002
2001
2000
An
ethical approach to media culture in music education. Response to
questions from Luca Marconi for Italian music teachers’ magazine.
Published in Italian as ‘Un approccio etico alla cultura mediale’
in Musica Domani no. 116 (EDT, Torino, 2000), pp. 30-31
Harmony
Handout. Entries for EPMOW (Encyclopedia
of Popular Music of the World): includes articles on Circle of Fifths,
Chord, Counterpoint, Harmony, Heterophony, Lead Sheet, Lead Sheet Chord
Shorthand, Polyphony, Turnaround (2000) [581k, 50 pages PDF, 41 music
examples, 12 tables]
Kojak
- 50 Seconds of TV Music - Towards the analysis of affect in popular
music (2nd edition of PhD thesis from 1979, 424 pp,). By 1976 the title
theme for the TV series Kojak had been heard by at least 100 million
people in at least seventy countries. It is an infinitesimal part of all
the mass media music outside the traditional musicological frames of reference.
Tagg argues that conventional musicology cannot help us understand how music
works on an everyday basis in the popular mass media market of ideas. This
book not only reveals, in fascinating detail, how a widely disseminated
piece of music can influence the TV-viewer’s evaluation of people and places:
it also presents a solid methodological basis for analysing music as if
it actually meant something.
Fernando
the Flute (144 pp. 710" = 177254 mm., illustrated, numerous music
examples. ISBN 0-9701684-1-1.) A neat edition of this fascinating analysis
of the famous but ideologically ambiguous Abba mega-hit from 1975. By 1977
Abba’s Fernando had sold at least 10 million copies worldwide. Released
some 18 months after the fascist coup in Chile, the English lyrics have
the vocalist reminiscing about ‘the fateful night we crossed the Rio Grande’
when fighting ‘for freedom in this land’. Fernando was certainly
no pro-Pinochet or pro-CIA song, but it failed to capture the mood of solidarity
and indignation which was so prevalent in Sweden at the time of its release.
Rigorous musematic analysis of the song reveals how its musical structuration
is operative in the communication of ideology and political stance.
1999-1998
1997-1995
1994-1990
1980s
1989-87
1986-84
Reading
sounds — written for L'Unità (Rome), summer 1986
[57k HTML]
before 1980
1979
Kojak
- 50 Seconds of TV Music - Towards the analysis of affect in popular
music (1st edition of PhD thesis from 1979, out of print; available in slightly revised edition from 2000). By 1976 the title
theme for the TV series Kojak had been heard by at least 100 million
people in at least seventy countries. It is an infinitesimal part of all
the mass media music outside the traditional musicological frames of reference.
Tagg argues that conventional musicology cannot help us understand how music
works on an everyday basis in the popular mass media market of ideas. This
book not only reveals, in fascinating detail, how a widely disseminated
piece of music can influence the TV-viewer’s evaluation of people and places:
it also presents a solid methodological basis for analysing music as if
it actually meant something.
1966
Popular
music as a possible medium in secondary school education — dissertation
for Certificate in Education, University of Manchester, 1966, with extensive
foreword added in 2001 [99k PDF] (dummy HTML)
Online Texts
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