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.
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 séptimo 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
British
Blue Notes. Powerpoint
presentation for ‘Contaminations’ conference, Département
d'anthropologie, Université de Montréal (Bob White).
Complete version:
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 Montréal
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 gestión musical de
la angustia Conferencia
Philip Tagg, Universidade de Montréal. V Congresso da IASPM-LA,
Río de Janeiro, 22 de Junio de 2004 Traducción 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 extraña 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 podría 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, — OUT
OF PRINT! WHAT TO DO?). 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.
View • Table
of Contents • Tune
1 (extract) •
Tune 2 (extract) • Index.
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.
Temporary out-of-print access solution.
Fernando
the Flute (144 pp. 7×10" = 177×254
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.
Temporary
out-off-print access solution.
1999-1998
1997-1995
1994-1990
1980s
before 1980
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]
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