Physics 36 / Music 36 Duke University Spring 2008 Handout 13
The Science of sound [THIRD EDITION], Thomas D. Rossing, F. Richard Moore, and Paul A. Wheeler, 2002, Addison-Wesley.
An Introduction to the Psychology of Hearing [third edition], Brian C. J. Moore, 1989, Academic Press [very well written, includes an excellent concise guide for audio electronics consumers who'd like to know what really matters; available in paperback].
Introduction to the Physics and Psychophysics of Music [second edition], Juan G. Roederer, 1975, Springer-Verlag [available in paperback].
The Psychology of Music, Diana Deutsch, ed., 1st edition (1982) in Perkins, 2nd edition (1999) in Music Lib., Academic Press.
Performing Music in the Age of Recording, Robert Philip, 2004, Yale Univ. Press.
Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music, Mark Katz, 2005, Univ. of California Press [available in paperback].
Setting the Record Straight: A Material History of Classical Recording, Colin Symes, 2004, Wesleyan Univ. Press.
Music and the Mind, Anthony Storr, 1992, Free Press. [An imminent psychiatrist's personal synthesis, based in large part on topics discussed in this course: available in a 1993 Ballantine paperback edition].
The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America 1900-1933, Emily Thompson, 2002, MIT Press. [Cultural effects of the birth of architectural acoustics, noise control, and the growing predominance of recorded and broadcast music over live performances. Also recounts very recent trends away from acoustically "dead" public venues (designed to not complicate electronic amplification and/or playback of recordings) in favor of spaces with reverberation and an acoustic identity.]
The Acoustic World of Early Modern England, Bruce R. Smith, 1999, Univ. of Chicago Press. [An excellent example of a recent trend in favor of including accoustical conditions in the assessment of historical places and times. This book treats such questions as the degree and nature of rural and urban environmental noise in Shakespeare's day, and acoustical influences on theatrical writing and performance. The brief discussions of room acoustics in Chapter 8 of this book, however, need to be read critically.]
Site of Sound: of Architecture and the Ear, edited by Brandon LaBelle and Steve Roden, 1999, Errant Bodies Press. [One of a number of recent publications highlighting unusual acoustical aspects of architectural projects and art installations, usually written by the creators of the works. This one is better than most, containing less acoustical nonsense. (If you investigate this book, be sure to compare the massive four-manual organ console pictured in the Luray Caverns article (and the Caverns' commercial Web site, where the "stalacpipe organ" is described as covering 3.5 acres) with the rather modest number of stalactites the text says it can actually "play".)]
The Origins of Music, edited by Nils L. Wallin, Björn Merker, and Steven Brown, 2001, MIT Press. [A collection of articles related to recently converging interests in a variety of academic fields, leading to new programs in areas called -- for the moment, at least -- "evolutionary musicology", "biomusicology", and "paleomusicology". Includes discussions of how birdsong and audible communications among whales and apes may be related to human speech and music, and the possible musical uses of human archeological artifacts. Now available as a paperback.]
Temperament: the idea that solved music's greatest riddle, Stuart Isacoff, 2001, Knopf. [The discussion of scales, tunings, and temperaments in our course should equip you to assess the arguments in this rather ideosyncratic book.]
Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy, Robert Jourdain, 1997, Morrow.
Measure for Measure: A Musical History of Science, Thomas Levenson, 1994, Simon and Schuster [An intriguing exploration of the relationships between evolving musical instruments and contemporaneous scientific instruments; available in a 1995 Touchstone paperback edition].
Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics, Arthur H. Benade, 1976, Oxford University Press [Benade was the scientific expert on wind instruments, his book provides ingenious non-mathematical descriptions for many of the topics covered in our textbook].
Exploring Music, Charles Taylor, 1992, Institute of Physics Publishers [based on Taylor's widely-aclaimed second series of Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 1989-90, telecast by the BBC; available in paperback].
The Auditory Periphery, Peter Dallos, 1973, Academic Press.
An Introduction to the Physiology of Hearing, James O. Pickles, 1982, Academic Press.
Music and the Brain: Studies in the Neurology of Music, MacDonald Critchley and R. A. Henson, eds., 1977, Wm. Heinemann Medical Books.
Acoustical Designing in Architecture, Vern O. Knudsen and Cyril M. Harris, 1950, John Wiley and Sons; reprinted in 1978 by the American Institute of Physics [obviously dated in some respects, but unexcelled in its presentation of the basics; available in paperback].
Concert Halls and Opera Houses: Music, Acoustics, and Architecture "Second Edition", Leo L. Beranek, 2004, Springer-Verlag. This is the latest version -- including 100 highly regarded performance halls -- of Concert and Opera Halls: How They Sound, 1996, American Institute of Physics [which included data on 76 of the halls and was in turn a thorough reworking of a 1962 book (Music, Acoustics and Architecture, John Wiley and Sons) that included data from a survey of the 54 halls studied in preparation for the design of the original Philharmonic Hall of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts].
The Physics of Musical Instruments, Neville H. Fletcher and Thomas D. Rossing, 1991, Springer-Verlag [considerably more detail than our text on most instruments, includes excellent recent bibliographies].
The Science of the Singing Voice, Johan Sundberg, 1987, N. Illinois Univ. Press.
Science of Percussion Instruments, Thomas D. Rossing, World Scientific, Singapore, 2000.
On the Sensations of Tone, Hermann Helmholtz., 1954, Dover [reprinting of the 1885 second edition of the English translation by Alexander J. Ellis of the 1877 fourth edition of Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen. The enduring interest in this classic work is evidence of Helmholtz's extraordinary insights; available in paperback].
Collected Papers on Acoustics, Wallace Clement Sabine, 1964, Dover [reprinting of the seminal work on modern room acoustics; available in paperback].
Acoustics: Historical and Philosophical Development, a volume in the Benchmark Papers in Acoustics series, R. Bruce Lindsay, ed., 1972, Dowden, Hutchinson and Ross, Stroudsburg, Pa.
Sounds of Our Times: Two Hundred Years of Acoustics, Robert T. Beyer, AIP Press (Springer-Verlag), New York, 1998.
[see also The Scoundscape of Modernity above]
Audio Engineering Handbook, K. Blair Benson, 1988, McGraw-Hill [also includes good brief sections on studio design considerations].
