Benjamin Piekut
Biographic Data
| ID | 785544 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Benjamin Piekut |
| GIVEN NAMES | Benjamin |
| FAMILY NAME | Piekut |
| SIGNATURE | PIEKUT B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Benjamin Piekut is Lecturer in Music at the University of Southampton, England. He teaches units in pop, jazz, and cultural studies, and is preparing a book on experimental music in New York during the 1960s. He wrote a chapter on composer/activist Henry Flynt for the collection Sound Commitments (Oxford University Press, 2009), and is the author of two articles on the Jazz Composers Guild, forthcoming in Jazz Perspectives and American Quarterly. |
| ORCID | 0009-0008-8978-3772 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 75 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 7 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Sound Against Music: The Musical Amateurs of the Judson Dance Generation
The Judson generation of artists (Rainer, Forti, Childs, Paxton, and others) introduced a conceptual distinction between music and sound that amounted to a soft critique of the institution of music. Dance in the 1960s was a fitting site for this critique due to the generative work of John Cage and the increasingly widespread availability of the technological means for working with sound. These two conditions undermined the institutionalization of…
The Afterlives of Indeterminacy
This article explores composer John Cage’s turn to practice in the 1960s, placing it in a history of chance that extends into the nineteenth century, when the speculations of finance capitalism, the measurement of norms and their deviations, the statistical analysis of population and disease, and the assessment and management of risk all produced ways of calculating and mitigating risk. Cage and his primary collaborator, the pianist and electroni…
La partition musicale et chorégraphique: Un débat entre Bojana Cvejić, Marc Downie et Paul Kaiser, Benjamin Piekut, Frédéric Pouillaude et Edward C. Warburton, mené par Mark Franko et Kate van Orden
Parler de partitions musicales et chorégraphiques, qu’on les considère ensemble ou séparément, conduit inévitablement à soulever des questions sur les représentations textuelles très inégales, ayant évolué au cours du temps, qui tentent de saisir le son, la parole, le geste et le mouvement. En musique, la partition commence dès que sont notés des signes accompagnant le texte liturgique, représentant les gestes faits par les chanteurs d’un chœur p…
Amateurism
‘The amateur’ is an unstable figure across geographic contexts that have shaped an extraordinary range of activity, from non-remunerated, self-organised, non-official, anti-ruling class, insurgent artistic efforts, to programmatic State efforts to marshal ‘folk’ production into national narratives of authentic belonging. With this special issue, the authors argue that an examination of this topic will benefit from the adoption of a global perspec…
Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies
The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies, Volume 1
Pigeons
The author shares his experience researching an elusive piece of music, reflecting on the possible causes of quirk historicism and the possible consequences of the postcritical turn
Improvising Yoga
This chapter explores improvisation during the practice of yoga as a way to consider Foucault’s concept of “techniques of the self.” It describes and analyzes the way that the thinking body and the thinking mind can improvise together to construct a corporeality that resists the docilization of the body that is exerted through advertising, fitness, and health regimens. It thereby contributes to the investigation of improvisation and the politics …
Free Improvisation as a Path-Dependent Process
Freely improvised music lacks commonly used mechanisms (e.g., scores, conductors, shared performance practices) that serve to coordinate choices across performers in other musical genres. This chapter analyses problems and solutions of musical coordination in free improvisation through the lens of “path dependence,” an analytic framework used in economics to model situations in which agents perceive a high pay-off to coordinating market choices. …
Germaine de Staël’s and the Early Usage of Improvisation in English
This chapter describes the emergence of the terminology of improvisation in the English language. Terms relating to improvisation began to appear in the eighteenth century and came to be used frequently in the nineteenth. Germaine de Staël’s 1807 novel Corinne ou L’Italie (published in French and translated into English the same year) was an important part of this emergence of improvisation. By attending to the content and language of Corinne, in…
Improvisation and Ecclesial Ethics
This chapter shows why and how Christian ethics is helpfully linked to improvisation in the theater. It describes universal (ethics for anyone), subversive (ethics for the excluded), and ecclesial (ethics for the church) as three strands of Christian ethics. It goes on to identify theatrical improvisation as a way of resolving tensions in ecclesial ethics—tensions largely concerned with synthesizing the virtue tradition stemming from Aristotle wi…
Actor-Networks in Music History: Clarifications and Critiques
This article offers clarifications and critiques of actor-network theory and its usefulness for music historiography. Reviewing the work of ANT theorists Bruno Latour, Annemarie Mol, and other social theorists (such as Georgina Born and Anna Tsing), the author explains that ANT is a methodology, not a theory. As a general introduction, the author outlines ANT's methodological presuppositions about human and non-human agency, action, ontology, and…
The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies, Volume 2
Improvisation informs a vast array of human activities, from creative practices in art, dance, music, and literature to everyday conversation and the relationships to natural and built environments that surround and sustain us. These volumes gather scholarship on improvisation from a similarly wide range of perspectives, with contributions from more than 60 scholars working in architecture, anthropology, art history, computer science, cognitive s…
Chance and Certainty: John Cage's Politics of Nature
Sound's Modest Witness: Notes on Cage and Modernism
John Cage's work has been interpreted by various critics as representative of both modernism and postmodernism. Although scholars have focused on the aesthetic and historical dimensions of modernism, the subject can also be approached from the perspective of ontology. Specifically, Cage's work was premised on an absolute ontological distinction between an objective natural world and a subjective social world. This modernist worldview led Cage to …
Deadness: Technologies of the Intermundane
Posthumous duets-performances involving a dead singer and a living one-have become ubiquitous in popular music. As the case of Natalie and Nat "King" Cole's "Unforgettable" makes clear, all sound recording harnesses the productive capacities of both living and dead, patterned through specific forms of co-laboring, or "deadness
New Thing? Gender and Sexuality in the Jazz Composers Guild
Trumpeter and composer Bill Dixon founded the Jazz Composers Guild in the fall of 1964. The organization included Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Paul and Carla Bley, Archie Shepp, Roswell Rudd, Burton Greene, and John Tchicai, among others. The Guild's short history was marked by conflict both within the organization and with other figures in the jazz underground, such as Amiri Baraka. Scholarship has explained these conflicts in terms of race and class, …
Race, Community, and Conflict in the Jazz Composers Guild
Following the success of his avant-garde festival, “The October Revolution in Jazz,” trumpeter and composer Bill Dixon founded the Jazz Composers Guild in the fall of 1964. The organization included Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Paul and Carla Bley, Archie Shepp, Roswell Rudd, Burton Greene, and John Tchicai, among others. One of the first significant attempts at self-determination by jazz musicians, the Guild sought to reorient the exploitative working …
Lerdahl, Fred
Deadness: Technologies of the Intermundane
Posthumous duets-performances involving a dead singer and a living one-have become ubiquitous in popular music. As the case of Natalie and Nat "King" Cole's "Unforgettable" makes clear, all sound recording harnesses the productive capacities of both living and dead, patterned through specific forms of co-laboring, or "deadness
Actor-Networks in Music History: Clarifications and Critiques
This article offers clarifications and critiques of actor-network theory and its usefulness for music historiography. Reviewing the work of ANT theorists Bruno Latour, Annemarie Mol, and other social theorists (such as Georgina Born and Anna Tsing), the author explains that ANT is a methodology, not a theory. As a general introduction, the author outlines ANT's methodological presuppositions about human and non-human agency, action, ontology, and…
Chance and Certainty: John Cage's Politics of Nature
Sound's Modest Witness: Notes on Cage and Modernism
John Cage's work has been interpreted by various critics as representative of both modernism and postmodernism. Although scholars have focused on the aesthetic and historical dimensions of modernism, the subject can also be approached from the perspective of ontology. Specifically, Cage's work was premised on an absolute ontological distinction between an objective natural world and a subjective social world. This modernist worldview led Cage to …
Amateurism
‘The amateur’ is an unstable figure across geographic contexts that have shaped an extraordinary range of activity, from non-remunerated, self-organised, non-official, anti-ruling class, insurgent artistic efforts, to programmatic State efforts to marshal ‘folk’ production into national narratives of authentic belonging. With this special issue, the authors argue that an examination of this topic will benefit from the adoption of a global perspec…
New Thing? Gender and Sexuality in the Jazz Composers Guild
Trumpeter and composer Bill Dixon founded the Jazz Composers Guild in the fall of 1964. The organization included Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Paul and Carla Bley, Archie Shepp, Roswell Rudd, Burton Greene, and John Tchicai, among others. The Guild's short history was marked by conflict both within the organization and with other figures in the jazz underground, such as Amiri Baraka. Scholarship has explained these conflicts in terms of race and class, …
Lerdahl, Fred
Race, Community, and Conflict in the Jazz Composers Guild
Following the success of his avant-garde festival, “The October Revolution in Jazz,” trumpeter and composer Bill Dixon founded the Jazz Composers Guild in the fall of 1964. The organization included Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Paul and Carla Bley, Archie Shepp, Roswell Rudd, Burton Greene, and John Tchicai, among others. One of the first significant attempts at self-determination by jazz musicians, the Guild sought to reorient the exploitative working …
Deadness: Technologies of the Intermundane
Posthumous duets-performances involving a dead singer and a living one-have become ubiquitous in popular music. As the case of Natalie and Nat "King" Cole's "Unforgettable" makes clear, all sound recording harnesses the productive capacities of both living and dead, patterned through specific forms of co-laboring, or "deadness
New Thing? Gender and Sexuality in the Jazz Composers Guild
Trumpeter and composer Bill Dixon founded the Jazz Composers Guild in the fall of 1964. The organization included Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Paul and Carla Bley, Archie Shepp, Roswell Rudd, Burton Greene, and John Tchicai, among others. The Guild's short history was marked by conflict both within the organization and with other figures in the jazz underground, such as Amiri Baraka. Scholarship has explained these conflicts in terms of race and class, …
Sound's Modest Witness: Notes on Cage and Modernism
John Cage's work has been interpreted by various critics as representative of both modernism and postmodernism. Although scholars have focused on the aesthetic and historical dimensions of modernism, the subject can also be approached from the perspective of ontology. Specifically, Cage's work was premised on an absolute ontological distinction between an objective natural world and a subjective social world. This modernist worldview led Cage to …
The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies, Volume 2
Improvisation informs a vast array of human activities, from creative practices in art, dance, music, and literature to everyday conversation and the relationships to natural and built environments that surround and sustain us. These volumes gather scholarship on improvisation from a similarly wide range of perspectives, with contributions from more than 60 scholars working in architecture, anthropology, art history, computer science, cognitive s…
Chance and Certainty: John Cage's Politics of Nature
Improvising Yoga
This chapter explores improvisation during the practice of yoga as a way to consider Foucault’s concept of “techniques of the self.” It describes and analyzes the way that the thinking body and the thinking mind can improvise together to construct a corporeality that resists the docilization of the body that is exerted through advertising, fitness, and health regimens. It thereby contributes to the investigation of improvisation and the politics …
Free Improvisation as a Path-Dependent Process
Freely improvised music lacks commonly used mechanisms (e.g., scores, conductors, shared performance practices) that serve to coordinate choices across performers in other musical genres. This chapter analyses problems and solutions of musical coordination in free improvisation through the lens of “path dependence,” an analytic framework used in economics to model situations in which agents perceive a high pay-off to coordinating market choices. …
Germaine de Staël’s and the Early Usage of Improvisation in English
This chapter describes the emergence of the terminology of improvisation in the English language. Terms relating to improvisation began to appear in the eighteenth century and came to be used frequently in the nineteenth. Germaine de Staël’s 1807 novel Corinne ou L’Italie (published in French and translated into English the same year) was an important part of this emergence of improvisation. By attending to the content and language of Corinne, in…
Improvisation and Ecclesial Ethics
This chapter shows why and how Christian ethics is helpfully linked to improvisation in the theater. It describes universal (ethics for anyone), subversive (ethics for the excluded), and ecclesial (ethics for the church) as three strands of Christian ethics. It goes on to identify theatrical improvisation as a way of resolving tensions in ecclesial ethics—tensions largely concerned with synthesizing the virtue tradition stemming from Aristotle wi…
Actor-Networks in Music History: Clarifications and Critiques
This article offers clarifications and critiques of actor-network theory and its usefulness for music historiography. Reviewing the work of ANT theorists Bruno Latour, Annemarie Mol, and other social theorists (such as Georgina Born and Anna Tsing), the author explains that ANT is a methodology, not a theory. As a general introduction, the author outlines ANT's methodological presuppositions about human and non-human agency, action, ontology, and…
Pigeons
The author shares his experience researching an elusive piece of music, reflecting on the possible causes of quirk historicism and the possible consequences of the postcritical turn
Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies
The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies, Volume 1
La partition musicale et chorégraphique: Un débat entre Bojana Cvejić, Marc Downie et Paul Kaiser, Benjamin Piekut, Frédéric Pouillaude et Edward C. Warburton, mené par Mark Franko et Kate van Orden
Parler de partitions musicales et chorégraphiques, qu’on les considère ensemble ou séparément, conduit inévitablement à soulever des questions sur les représentations textuelles très inégales, ayant évolué au cours du temps, qui tentent de saisir le son, la parole, le geste et le mouvement. En musique, la partition commence dès que sont notés des signes accompagnant le texte liturgique, représentant les gestes faits par les chanteurs d’un chœur p…
Amateurism
‘The amateur’ is an unstable figure across geographic contexts that have shaped an extraordinary range of activity, from non-remunerated, self-organised, non-official, anti-ruling class, insurgent artistic efforts, to programmatic State efforts to marshal ‘folk’ production into national narratives of authentic belonging. With this special issue, the authors argue that an examination of this topic will benefit from the adoption of a global perspec…
The Afterlives of Indeterminacy
This article explores composer John Cage’s turn to practice in the 1960s, placing it in a history of chance that extends into the nineteenth century, when the speculations of finance capitalism, the measurement of norms and their deviations, the statistical analysis of population and disease, and the assessment and management of risk all produced ways of calculating and mitigating risk. Cage and his primary collaborator, the pianist and electroni…
Sound Against Music: The Musical Amateurs of the Judson Dance Generation
The Judson generation of artists (Rainer, Forti, Childs, Paxton, and others) introduced a conceptual distinction between music and sound that amounted to a soft critique of the institution of music. Dance in the 1960s was a fitting site for this critique due to the generative work of John Cage and the increasingly widespread availability of the technological means for working with sound. These two conditions undermined the institutionalization of…
Art (13 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Visual arts (8 works) · Improvisation (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · History (6 works) · Music History and Culture (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works) · Law (5 works)