Brian Kane
Biographic Data
| ID | 1100867 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brian Kane |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brian |
| FAMILY NAME | Kane |
| SIGNATURE | KANE B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Yale University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2814-0801 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 51 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Do Vibrations Make Decisions
I have tremendous admiration for Nina Sun Eidsheim’s thinking because it is as unconventional as it is rigorous and ethically committed. Her two monographs, Sensing Sound and The Race of Sound, present their ideas with intensity and grace. They overflow with remarkable case studies that remain with the reader long after the pages have been read; they bring together the worlds of popular music and classical music—and of the avant-garde, the popula…
The Radio Free Dixie Playlists
Broadcast from Havana, Cuba, but intended for audiences in the United States, Radio Free Dixie was the work of the civil rights leader Robert F. Williams. Airing from 1962 until 1966, the program carefully used music, news, and commentary to convey a militant message of armed self-defense and a critique of American imperialism and racism. While most scholars have focused on William’s spoken commentaries, this article aims to reconsider the role o…
Jazz, Mediation, Ontology
While the ontology of musical works is a venerable theme in the philosophy of music, works of classical music have been the primary focus of study. This essay displaces that focus by considering the ontology of musical works in relation to jazz ‘standards’. Responding primarily to realist conceptions of musical works for performance, the essay outlines an emergent, non-essentialist, network-based ontology of jazz standards. By focusing on two key…
"Phenomenology, Physiognomy, and the "Radio Voice
The publication of Current of Music affords a reassessment of Theodor W. Adorno's years at the Princeton Radio Research Project. Although his encounter with the culture industry was made vivid and palpable during these years, this article reads Current of Music as a prolongation of his earlier concerns with a critique of Husserlian phenomenology and an analysis of Wagnerian phantasmagoria. I argue that Adorno's method for radio research is phenom…
Sound studies without auditory culture
Sound studies' and 'auditory culture' are terms often used synonymously to designate a broad, heterogeneous, interdisciplinary field of inquiry. Yet a potential disjunction between these terms remains. Some scholars within sound studies, by turning to the ontology of sound and to the material-affective processes that lie 'beneath representation and signification', reject auditory cultural studies. In this essay, I consider the 'ontological turn' …
The Baptism of the Acousmate
Alongside the Pythagorean veil, writers interested in the history of acousmatic sound have noted the obscure French word “acousmate.” The word appears in Apollinaire’s poetry, which was (via the poet Jérôme Peignot) the likely source for Schaeffer’s adoption of the term. Writers on acousmatic sound (and even the Larousse dictionary) have assumed that “acousmate” and “acousmatique” are synonymous. In this chapter, that assumption is proven to be f…
Sound Unseen
Explores acousmatic sound - sound coming from outside the field of vision, from somewhere beyond. An unusual and neglected word 'acousmatic' was first introduced into modern parlance in the mid-1960s by avant garde composer of musique concrète Pierre Schaeffer. Working through, and often against, Schaeffer's ideas, Brian Kane presents a powerful argument for the central yet overlooked role of acousmatic sound in music aesthetics, sound studies, l…
Jean-Luc Nancy and the Listening Subject
This essay introduces the reader to Jean-Luc Nancy's writing on listening, by focusing on his use of two French verbs that both mean 'to listen', namely entendre and écouter. By playing close attention to way that Nancy differentiates these verbs, and the historical context in which they have played a role, one discovers an entryway into Nancy's challenging thinking about sound, sense, and subjectivity. Écouter and entendre are discussed in relat…
Acousmatic Fabrications
Acousmatic sound – a sound that one hears without seeing the causes behind it – creates situations where visual contributions to auditory experience are diminished. The author theorizes that acousmatic separation unsettles the relationship of the source, cause and effect of sound. To draw out the consequences of this theory, Les Paul and Mary Ford’s multi-tracked recordings and live performances are examined, and three central claims are posited.…
Aspect and Ascription in the Music of Mathias Spahlinger
This paper employs a Wittgensteinian framework to describe the experience of listening to the music of Mathias Spahlinger. First, a ‘skeptical puzzle’ is introduced, based on a reading of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. The puzzle problematizes the security of ascriptions of meaning to material practices. Then, Spahlinger's éphémère is used as a test case: it is described from a first-person perspective, compared with an account of t…
The Elusive “Elementary Atom of Music”
After Adorno
Book Review| June 01 2004 After Adorno: Rethinking Music Sociology DeNora, Tia, After Adorno: Rethinking Music Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 176 pages, $23 (paperback). Brian Kane Brian Kane Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Qui Parle (2004) 15 (1): 169–174. https://doi.org/10.1215/quiparle.15.1.169 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Brian Kane; After Adorno:…
The Foster Care Research Project
A two-year prospective study compared individual and group models of support for foster parents. Results showed greater foster parent satisfaction with the group model. An independent critique identified methodological flaws that would preclude further differentiation of the models and suggested that clinical impressions and trends in favor of the group model be given credibility. Operation of the group model is described, and reasons for the dif…
Scenes From Family Life
Sound studies without auditory culture
Sound studies' and 'auditory culture' are terms often used synonymously to designate a broad, heterogeneous, interdisciplinary field of inquiry. Yet a potential disjunction between these terms remains. Some scholars within sound studies, by turning to the ontology of sound and to the material-affective processes that lie 'beneath representation and signification', reject auditory cultural studies. In this essay, I consider the 'ontological turn' …
Jean-Luc Nancy and the Listening Subject
This essay introduces the reader to Jean-Luc Nancy's writing on listening, by focusing on his use of two French verbs that both mean 'to listen', namely entendre and écouter. By playing close attention to way that Nancy differentiates these verbs, and the historical context in which they have played a role, one discovers an entryway into Nancy's challenging thinking about sound, sense, and subjectivity. Écouter and entendre are discussed in relat…
Jazz, Mediation, Ontology
While the ontology of musical works is a venerable theme in the philosophy of music, works of classical music have been the primary focus of study. This essay displaces that focus by considering the ontology of musical works in relation to jazz ‘standards’. Responding primarily to realist conceptions of musical works for performance, the essay outlines an emergent, non-essentialist, network-based ontology of jazz standards. By focusing on two key…
"Phenomenology, Physiognomy, and the "Radio Voice
The publication of Current of Music affords a reassessment of Theodor W. Adorno's years at the Princeton Radio Research Project. Although his encounter with the culture industry was made vivid and palpable during these years, this article reads Current of Music as a prolongation of his earlier concerns with a critique of Husserlian phenomenology and an analysis of Wagnerian phantasmagoria. I argue that Adorno's method for radio research is phenom…
Scenes From Family Life
Scenes From Family Life
The Foster Care Research Project
A two-year prospective study compared individual and group models of support for foster parents. Results showed greater foster parent satisfaction with the group model. An independent critique identified methodological flaws that would preclude further differentiation of the models and suggested that clinical impressions and trends in favor of the group model be given credibility. Operation of the group model is described, and reasons for the dif…
The Elusive “Elementary Atom of Music”
After Adorno
Book Review| June 01 2004 After Adorno: Rethinking Music Sociology DeNora, Tia, After Adorno: Rethinking Music Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 176 pages, $23 (paperback). Brian Kane Brian Kane Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Qui Parle (2004) 15 (1): 169–174. https://doi.org/10.1215/quiparle.15.1.169 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Brian Kane; After Adorno:…
Aspect and Ascription in the Music of Mathias Spahlinger
This paper employs a Wittgensteinian framework to describe the experience of listening to the music of Mathias Spahlinger. First, a ‘skeptical puzzle’ is introduced, based on a reading of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. The puzzle problematizes the security of ascriptions of meaning to material practices. Then, Spahlinger's éphémère is used as a test case: it is described from a first-person perspective, compared with an account of t…
Acousmatic Fabrications
Acousmatic sound – a sound that one hears without seeing the causes behind it – creates situations where visual contributions to auditory experience are diminished. The author theorizes that acousmatic separation unsettles the relationship of the source, cause and effect of sound. To draw out the consequences of this theory, Les Paul and Mary Ford’s multi-tracked recordings and live performances are examined, and three central claims are posited.…
Jean-Luc Nancy and the Listening Subject
This essay introduces the reader to Jean-Luc Nancy's writing on listening, by focusing on his use of two French verbs that both mean 'to listen', namely entendre and écouter. By playing close attention to way that Nancy differentiates these verbs, and the historical context in which they have played a role, one discovers an entryway into Nancy's challenging thinking about sound, sense, and subjectivity. Écouter and entendre are discussed in relat…
The Baptism of the Acousmate
Alongside the Pythagorean veil, writers interested in the history of acousmatic sound have noted the obscure French word “acousmate.” The word appears in Apollinaire’s poetry, which was (via the poet Jérôme Peignot) the likely source for Schaeffer’s adoption of the term. Writers on acousmatic sound (and even the Larousse dictionary) have assumed that “acousmate” and “acousmatique” are synonymous. In this chapter, that assumption is proven to be f…
Sound Unseen
Explores acousmatic sound - sound coming from outside the field of vision, from somewhere beyond. An unusual and neglected word 'acousmatic' was first introduced into modern parlance in the mid-1960s by avant garde composer of musique concrète Pierre Schaeffer. Working through, and often against, Schaeffer's ideas, Brian Kane presents a powerful argument for the central yet overlooked role of acousmatic sound in music aesthetics, sound studies, l…
Sound studies without auditory culture
Sound studies' and 'auditory culture' are terms often used synonymously to designate a broad, heterogeneous, interdisciplinary field of inquiry. Yet a potential disjunction between these terms remains. Some scholars within sound studies, by turning to the ontology of sound and to the material-affective processes that lie 'beneath representation and signification', reject auditory cultural studies. In this essay, I consider the 'ontological turn' …
"Phenomenology, Physiognomy, and the "Radio Voice
The publication of Current of Music affords a reassessment of Theodor W. Adorno's years at the Princeton Radio Research Project. Although his encounter with the culture industry was made vivid and palpable during these years, this article reads Current of Music as a prolongation of his earlier concerns with a critique of Husserlian phenomenology and an analysis of Wagnerian phantasmagoria. I argue that Adorno's method for radio research is phenom…
Jazz, Mediation, Ontology
While the ontology of musical works is a venerable theme in the philosophy of music, works of classical music have been the primary focus of study. This essay displaces that focus by considering the ontology of musical works in relation to jazz ‘standards’. Responding primarily to realist conceptions of musical works for performance, the essay outlines an emergent, non-essentialist, network-based ontology of jazz standards. By focusing on two key…
The Radio Free Dixie Playlists
Broadcast from Havana, Cuba, but intended for audiences in the United States, Radio Free Dixie was the work of the civil rights leader Robert F. Williams. Airing from 1962 until 1966, the program carefully used music, news, and commentary to convey a militant message of armed self-defense and a critique of American imperialism and racism. While most scholars have focused on William’s spoken commentaries, this article aims to reconsider the role o…
Do Vibrations Make Decisions
I have tremendous admiration for Nina Sun Eidsheim’s thinking because it is as unconventional as it is rigorous and ethically committed. Her two monographs, Sensing Sound and The Race of Sound, present their ideas with intensity and grace. They overflow with remarkable case studies that remain with the reader long after the pages have been read; they bring together the worlds of popular music and classical music—and of the avant-garde, the popula…
Art (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Linguistics (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Literature (5 works) · Music Technology and Sound Studies (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Musicology and Musical Analysis (4 works)