Mankind – Music – Technology
Martin Flašar
This book examines the modalities of human relationships and technology as reflected in the musical thinking of the authors of art music of the 20th and early 21st centuries. The discursive and reference frame of the treatise consists mainly of individual artistic poetics and more general musical-aesthetic reflections embedded in the basic theoretical concepts of technology and its functions in culture and society.
“The author Martin Flašar has undertaken research that is long overdue concerning the relationship between the musician and rapidly evolving technology including techniques within music. The author focuses on 20th- and 21st-century art music exploring a period of the most rapid and extreme revolutions this art form has ever known. Instead of empirically analysing selected examples, Flašar has taken on the greater challenge of investigating his subject within the context of centuries of philosophy, sociology, and critical theory as well as music and musicology. He presents a methodology that is clearly applicable well beyond this subject and offers a readable yet profound volume discussing and contextualising the diverse horizon of relationships musicians have with their technology ranging from avoidance to dependence, assisting in its development to applying technology only when useful. This book represents the launch of an essential field of study.”
Prof. Leigh Landy, director of the Music, Technology and Innovation,
Institute for Sonic Creativity (MTI2), De Montfort University, Leicester
To be published in April 2024.