Music and Technology

Technology does not stand apart from music, influencing it from the outside--it is a part of music, integral to every aspect of musical activity and musical life. Music technology tends to evoke images of modernity, but all tools used to create, store, reproduce, and transmit music--new or old, acoustic or electronic--are technologies worthy of investigation. This Very Short Introduction ranges across centuries and continents, reveals surprising connections--between eighteenth century French android musicians and twenty-first century Japanese singing holograms or Baroque pipe organs and music video game controllers. Humans are, and have always been, creatures of technology and of music. If we want to understand how music is made and experienced, Mark Katz argues, we must investigate its relationship--ancient and inextricable--with technology.