Sam Mcauliffe
Biographic Data
| ID | 460374 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sam Mcauliffe |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sam |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcauliffe |
| SIGNATURE | MCAULIFFE S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Monash University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2592-8844 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Ethics, hermeneutics, and lessons from jazz
Ethics is often reserved for ‘serious’ situations, where people’s lives and/or livelihoods are at risk. But is ethics that selective? Perhaps we obscure part of what is at issue when we pick and choose what constitutes being worthy of ethical consideration. In this article it is argued that ethics is a ubiquitous character of life, and that insofar as we attend and respond to the world, we necessarily engage in ethics. Jazz improvisation is taken…
Situating the Musical Work in Improvised Telematic Performances
At first glance, the question of ‘where’ an improvised musical work is might appear to be straight forward. A freely improvisedFootnote1 work is surely ‘there’ at the site of performance. Improvised telematic performances, however, where individual ensemble members each perform from different performance sites via Internet network, seem to complicate the question of ‘where’ the work is situated, given that there is no single site of performance. …
Exploring Sonic Worlds
This paper develops the idea of ‘instrumentality’ to explore how the use of diverse tools or instruments involved in new music have the potential to (re)frame our engagement with the world. It will be argued that the choice of instrumental tools and how they are used in performance can not only enrich creative processes and outcomes for the artist but can also alter the audience’s relationship to the world by encouraging a conceptual engagement w…
Improvisation in Music and Philosophical Hermeneutics
In the first book to examine the overlooked relationship between musical improvisation and philosophical hermeneutics, Sam McAuliffe asks: what exactly is improvisation? And how does it relate to our being-in-the-world? Improvisation in Music and Philosophical Hermeneutics answers these questions by investigating the underlying structure of improvisation. McAuliffe argues that improvising is best understood as attending and responding to the situ…
The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures
Reassessing the Role of Subjectivity in Improvised Musical Performance
Notions of subjectivity and individuality pervade the discourse around jazz and non-idiomatic improvisation. While subjectivity plays an important role musical improvisation, the tendency to focus on the subjectivity of the player(s) – analysing their particular improvisatory approach(es) – has muddied the broader structure at issue: where the musical event goes beyond the players and leads them to unforeseen musical outcomes. In this paper I rea…
The Horizonal Field of Improvised Musical Performance
When we think of improvised musical performance, we commonly think of musicians engaged in an activity that brings forth a musical event of some kind. This activity is both situated and situating—it occurs in a particular locale and the event itself situates the players who are literally located within that event. This paper explores how we might understand the spatio-temporal field in which improvising musicians are situated when they perform. T…
Defending the “Improvisation as Conversation” Model of Improvised Musical Performance
It was in the 1990s that the metaphor commonly employed to explain and understand improvisation in jazz, “improvisation as conversation” came into prominence. In 2015 however, Wilson and MacDonald, from the perspective of music psychology, argued that this widespread model for understanding improvisation via language metaphors was inadequate to explain improvisation in music, broadly construed. While I agree with Wilson and MacDonald that there a…
The Significance of Improvisation in the Age of Technology
While there is a sense in which technological advancements enhance our experience of the world, there is also a sense in which technology obscures the world. One such instance of technology’s ability to (potentially) obscure the world is the way in which makes works of art (I focus on music) so readily accessible. While in many ways the accessibility and democratisation of music offered by digital streaming, for example, is seen to be convenient,…
Black Dust
The Encyclopedia of the Inexact Sciences brings together Raymond Queneau's research into an idiosyncratic canon of nineteenth-century works, each written by what he variously refers to as a 'literary lunatic' (fou littéraire) or a 'heteroclite.' For Queneau, the work of such an author is discernible less by its subject matter than the discursive position it speaks from: not only does it have no precedent, but so atypical is its standing with resp…
The Significance of Improvisation in the Age of Technology
While there is a sense in which technological advancements enhance our experience of the world, there is also a sense in which technology obscures the world. One such instance of technology’s ability to (potentially) obscure the world is the way in which makes works of art (I focus on music) so readily accessible. While in many ways the accessibility and democratisation of music offered by digital streaming, for example, is seen to be convenient,…
Black Dust
The Encyclopedia of the Inexact Sciences brings together Raymond Queneau's research into an idiosyncratic canon of nineteenth-century works, each written by what he variously refers to as a 'literary lunatic' (fou littéraire) or a 'heteroclite.' For Queneau, the work of such an author is discernible less by its subject matter than the discursive position it speaks from: not only does it have no precedent, but so atypical is its standing with resp…
The Significance of Improvisation in the Age of Technology
While there is a sense in which technological advancements enhance our experience of the world, there is also a sense in which technology obscures the world. One such instance of technology’s ability to (potentially) obscure the world is the way in which makes works of art (I focus on music) so readily accessible. While in many ways the accessibility and democratisation of music offered by digital streaming, for example, is seen to be convenient,…
The Horizonal Field of Improvised Musical Performance
When we think of improvised musical performance, we commonly think of musicians engaged in an activity that brings forth a musical event of some kind. This activity is both situated and situating—it occurs in a particular locale and the event itself situates the players who are literally located within that event. This paper explores how we might understand the spatio-temporal field in which improvising musicians are situated when they perform. T…
Defending the “Improvisation as Conversation” Model of Improvised Musical Performance
It was in the 1990s that the metaphor commonly employed to explain and understand improvisation in jazz, “improvisation as conversation” came into prominence. In 2015 however, Wilson and MacDonald, from the perspective of music psychology, argued that this widespread model for understanding improvisation via language metaphors was inadequate to explain improvisation in music, broadly construed. While I agree with Wilson and MacDonald that there a…
The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures
Reassessing the Role of Subjectivity in Improvised Musical Performance
Notions of subjectivity and individuality pervade the discourse around jazz and non-idiomatic improvisation. While subjectivity plays an important role musical improvisation, the tendency to focus on the subjectivity of the player(s) – analysing their particular improvisatory approach(es) – has muddied the broader structure at issue: where the musical event goes beyond the players and leads them to unforeseen musical outcomes. In this paper I rea…
Exploring Sonic Worlds
This paper develops the idea of ‘instrumentality’ to explore how the use of diverse tools or instruments involved in new music have the potential to (re)frame our engagement with the world. It will be argued that the choice of instrumental tools and how they are used in performance can not only enrich creative processes and outcomes for the artist but can also alter the audience’s relationship to the world by encouraging a conceptual engagement w…
Improvisation in Music and Philosophical Hermeneutics
In the first book to examine the overlooked relationship between musical improvisation and philosophical hermeneutics, Sam McAuliffe asks: what exactly is improvisation? And how does it relate to our being-in-the-world? Improvisation in Music and Philosophical Hermeneutics answers these questions by investigating the underlying structure of improvisation. McAuliffe argues that improvising is best understood as attending and responding to the situ…
Ethics, hermeneutics, and lessons from jazz
Ethics is often reserved for ‘serious’ situations, where people’s lives and/or livelihoods are at risk. But is ethics that selective? Perhaps we obscure part of what is at issue when we pick and choose what constitutes being worthy of ethical consideration. In this article it is argued that ethics is a ubiquitous character of life, and that insofar as we attend and respond to the world, we necessarily engage in ethics. Jazz improvisation is taken…
Situating the Musical Work in Improvised Telematic Performances
At first glance, the question of ‘where’ an improvised musical work is might appear to be straight forward. A freely improvisedFootnote1 work is surely ‘there’ at the site of performance. Improvised telematic performances, however, where individual ensemble members each perform from different performance sites via Internet network, seem to complicate the question of ‘where’ the work is situated, given that there is no single site of performance. …
Art (9 works) · Aesthetics (8 works) · Musicology and Musical Analysis (7 works) · Musical (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Visual arts (6 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Improvisation (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works)