James Wierzbicki
Biographic Data
| ID | 988774 |
|---|---|
| NAME | James Wierzbicki |
| GIVEN NAMES | James |
| FAMILY NAME | Wierzbicki |
| SIGNATURE | WIERZBICKI J |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Sydney |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 3 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 19 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1888 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Oneiric music
Rapt/Wrapped Listening
This essay is prompted by “surround sound,” the sonic results of which have been evident in cinemas since the late 1970s and the encoding for which, in the form of Dolby 5.1 on the soundtracks of DVDs, since the turn of the century has been fairly ubiquitous. By way of background, the essay deals in turn with the physical nature of three-dimensional listening and with the history of stereophonic sound as manifest both in the cinema and on LP reco…
Dangerous Melodies
Silent Listening
This essay explores how one “listens to”—that is to say, how one takes in, makes sense of, and reacts to—“sounds” that are not really sounds at all but that are simply evocations of sounds served up by the authors of fiction. Although the essay’s conclusions apply to literary sounds in general, the examples on which the essay bases its observations and arguments are drawn—because their affective range is so very, very wide—from the vintage litera…
Parnas, Leslie
Teaching Cage’s “Silent Piece”
This brief article summarizes the results not only of several years’ worth of classroom performances and follow-up discussions of John Cage’s “silent piece”—commonly known as 4′33′′—but also of students’ usually frustrated efforts to perform the piece in private
Narrative cinema’s “sounds of silence”
Cinema has often depicted situations in which a character encounters silence, but almost never are these depictions actually silent. The complete muting of a soundtrack is a gesture so disruptive of the movie-going norm that filmmakers, wisely, have seldom attempted it; filmmakers seeking to depict a dramatically meaningful absence of sound have often relied extensively on a sonic presence. This essay focuses on three cinematic tropes in which th…
Ferden, Bruce
Lane, Louis
George Gershwin
Book Review| April 01 2012 George Gershwin George Gershwin. By Larry Starr. Yale Broadway Masters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0-300-11184-2 (cloth). Pp. xviii, 194. $45.00. James Wierzbicki James Wierzbicki Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Music (2012) 30 (1): 123–124. https://doi.org/10.5406/americanmusic.30.1.0123 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permiss…
Shedding Light on the ‘Colour Music’ of Sydney 's Alexander B. Hector
The first decades of the twentieth century were a fertile time for experiments in multimedia. Even whilst the motion picture was in its infancy, composers and visual artists throughout the western world eagerly sought ways in which to combine music with projected light; well-known examples of their efforts include the part for clavier à lumières that Alexander Scriabin included in his 1910 Prometheus: The Poem of Fire and the ‘colour crescendo’ a…
The postmodern in music
“Postmodern” is an elusive concept that embraces a wide range of critical theories and attitudes. To borrow the assessment that the American poet Walt Whitman offered of himself, the concept is large and contains multitudes, various aspects of which often seem to be at odds with one another. Postmodern art likewise contains multitudes; indeed, it would seem that one of postmodern art's chief characteristics is the comfortable integration of appar…
Louis and Bebe Barron's Forbidden Planet
Forbidden Planet is a product of the MGM studio, which at the time of the production of this film was hardly in the business of making science-fiction films. Originally planned as a "B" picture, the 1956 Forbidden Planet was praised for its spectacular special effects and brilliant color cinematography. The plot practically tingles with sexual innuendo and the dialogue is rich in references to Freudian psychology. However, in spite of all this, t…
Scarecrow Film Score Guides
Chapter 1
Neblett, Carol
Weird Vibrations
The theremin played a unique role in 1950s science fiction films. In Rocketship X-M, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing from Another Planet, and It Came from Outer Space, the instrument was not just a component of the studio orchestra but, in effect, the diegetic “voice” of the alien entities
Hayman, Richard
Kalichstein, Joseph
Hayman, Richard
Weird Vibrations
The theremin played a unique role in 1950s science fiction films. In Rocketship X-M, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing from Another Planet, and It Came from Outer Space, the instrument was not just a component of the studio orchestra but, in effect, the diegetic “voice” of the alien entities
Dangerous Melodies
Hayman, Richard
Hayman, Richard
Kalichstein, Joseph
Neblett, Carol
Weird Vibrations
The theremin played a unique role in 1950s science fiction films. In Rocketship X-M, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing from Another Planet, and It Came from Outer Space, the instrument was not just a component of the studio orchestra but, in effect, the diegetic “voice” of the alien entities
Louis and Bebe Barron's Forbidden Planet
Forbidden Planet is a product of the MGM studio, which at the time of the production of this film was hardly in the business of making science-fiction films. Originally planned as a "B" picture, the 1956 Forbidden Planet was praised for its spectacular special effects and brilliant color cinematography. The plot practically tingles with sexual innuendo and the dialogue is rich in references to Freudian psychology. However, in spite of all this, t…
Scarecrow Film Score Guides
Chapter 1
The postmodern in music
“Postmodern” is an elusive concept that embraces a wide range of critical theories and attitudes. To borrow the assessment that the American poet Walt Whitman offered of himself, the concept is large and contains multitudes, various aspects of which often seem to be at odds with one another. Postmodern art likewise contains multitudes; indeed, it would seem that one of postmodern art's chief characteristics is the comfortable integration of appar…
Lane, Louis
George Gershwin
Book Review| April 01 2012 George Gershwin George Gershwin. By Larry Starr. Yale Broadway Masters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0-300-11184-2 (cloth). Pp. xviii, 194. $45.00. James Wierzbicki James Wierzbicki Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Music (2012) 30 (1): 123–124. https://doi.org/10.5406/americanmusic.30.1.0123 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permiss…
Shedding Light on the ‘Colour Music’ of Sydney 's Alexander B. Hector
The first decades of the twentieth century were a fertile time for experiments in multimedia. Even whilst the motion picture was in its infancy, composers and visual artists throughout the western world eagerly sought ways in which to combine music with projected light; well-known examples of their efforts include the part for clavier à lumières that Alexander Scriabin included in his 1910 Prometheus: The Poem of Fire and the ‘colour crescendo’ a…
Ferden, Bruce
Parnas, Leslie
Teaching Cage’s “Silent Piece”
This brief article summarizes the results not only of several years’ worth of classroom performances and follow-up discussions of John Cage’s “silent piece”—commonly known as 4′33′′—but also of students’ usually frustrated efforts to perform the piece in private
Narrative cinema’s “sounds of silence”
Cinema has often depicted situations in which a character encounters silence, but almost never are these depictions actually silent. The complete muting of a soundtrack is a gesture so disruptive of the movie-going norm that filmmakers, wisely, have seldom attempted it; filmmakers seeking to depict a dramatically meaningful absence of sound have often relied extensively on a sonic presence. This essay focuses on three cinematic tropes in which th…
Silent Listening
This essay explores how one “listens to”—that is to say, how one takes in, makes sense of, and reacts to—“sounds” that are not really sounds at all but that are simply evocations of sounds served up by the authors of fiction. Although the essay’s conclusions apply to literary sounds in general, the examples on which the essay bases its observations and arguments are drawn—because their affective range is so very, very wide—from the vintage litera…
Rapt/Wrapped Listening
This essay is prompted by “surround sound,” the sonic results of which have been evident in cinemas since the late 1970s and the encoding for which, in the form of Dolby 5.1 on the soundtracks of DVDs, since the turn of the century has been fairly ubiquitous. By way of background, the essay deals in turn with the physical nature of three-dimensional listening and with the history of stereophonic sound as manifest both in the cinema and on LP reco…
Dangerous Melodies
Oneiric music
Art (15 works) · Literature (8 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works) · History (5 works) · History and Developments in Astronomy (5 works) · Visual arts (5 works) · Art history (4 works) · Musical (4 works) · Musicology and Musical Analysis (4 works)