Isabella Van Elferen

Biographic Data

ID642950
NAMEIsabella Van Elferen
GIVEN NAMESIsabella
FAMILY NAMEVan Elferen
SIGNATUREVAN ELFEREN I
AFFILIATIONSKingston University
ORCID0000-0001-5264-0446
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS9
TOTAL CITATIONS2
WORKS AS AUTHOR9
WORKS AS EDITOR0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2010
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2020
H-INDEX1

  • Introductionmusical Materialisms (Plural)

    Matthew Sergeant, Isabella Van Elferen et al.ARTICLEContemporary Music Review2020References: 29

    A distinct if diverse musical research area has begun to emerge in recent years. While there is enough common ground to define it as a research field, its objects and themes are not yet delineated

  • Dark timbre

    Open AccessIsabella Van ElferenARTICLEPopular Music2018Cited by: 1References: 17

    Timbre is a key aspect of musical practice and aesthetics. Artists use instrumentation, vocal technique, and production technology to create precise tone colours; listeners are able to identify genres, artists and connotations through timbre. However, critical assessment of its ephemeral musical agency is scarce. This article develops a theory of timbre. Goth music, which privileges tone colour in production, performance, and aesthetic, is a case…

  • Agency, Aporia, Approaches

    Isabella Van ElferenARTICLEContemporary Music Review2017

    Timbre is one of the most fascinating aspects of music and musical aesthetics, but also one of the most mysterious ones. Its sonorous qualities are exact: composers can indicate minutely what type

  • Drastic Allure

    Isabella Van ElferenARTICLEContemporary Music Review2017References: 12

    This article analyses the binarism that pervades critical assessments of tone colour. In musicology, sound studies, and aesthetics alike, timbre is either considered in a materialist way as the manipulation of sound waves and instruments, or, in idealist fashion, as a sublime and unapproachable Thing that defies description. Timbre’s paradoxical im/materiality engenders a sublime aesthetic experience that can be described as the aporia of being d…

  • Silent dark

    Isabella Van Elferen, Sven RaeymaekersARTICLEJournal for Cultural Research2015

    The simple question “What is silence?” does not yield simple answers. Quiet and transcendence, darkness and death are the connotations of an acoustical phenomenon that is very rare – if not impossible – in actual life; and if absolute silence would even be thinkable, where and how would it be? Analysing an interdisciplinary range of silent cultural practices and artistic expressions of silence, this article proposes five types of silence: a metap…

  • The Cambridge Companion to the Modern Gothic

    Open AccessKatarzyna Ancuta, John Paul Riquelme et al.BOOKCambridge Companion to the Modern…2014

    This Companion explores the many ways in which the Gothic has dispersed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and in particular how it has come to offer a focus for the tensions inherent in modernity. Fourteen essays by world-class experts show how the Gothic in numerous forms - including literature, film, television, and cyberspace - helps audiences both to distance themselves from and to deal with some of the key underlying problems of m…

  • Gothic Music

    Isabella Van ElferenBOOKGothic Music2012

    Introduction: 'Baleful Sounds and Wild Voices Ignored' 1. The Sound of Gothic Literature 2. Gothic Film Music: The Audiovisual Uncanny 3. Gothic Television Music: The Unhomely Home 4. Gothic Game Music: Hyperreality Haunted 5. Goth Music: Uncanny Embodied 6. The Unthinkable Sounds of the Uncanny

  • East German Goth and the Spectres of Marx

    Open AccessIsabella Van ElferenARTICLEPopular Music2011Cited by: 1References: 5

    The East of Germany, theBundesländerof the former GDR, is an important centre of Goth activity. The Goth scene is remarkably large in this part of Germany, and one of the most important yearly Goth festivals, theWave-Gotik-Treffen, takes place in Leipzig. This article investigates the specific characteristics and internal dynamics of East German Goth subcultures after German reunification. Combining subcultural theory and Gothic criticism with De…

  • The Musical Madeleine

    Imar de Vries, Isabella Van ElferenARTICLEPopular Music & Society2010References: 10

    In this paper, we consider musical cell-phone ringtones as virtual, communicative and cultural performances. They appear unpredictably, they are interpreted by variegated and dynamic audiences, and they establish stages upon which cultural meanings are portrayed. We will argue that the musical ringtone functions as a musical madeleine in Marcel Proust's sense, an involuntary mnemonic trigger of a complex web of individual and collective memories.…