Richard Middleton
Biography
Richard Middleton is Staff Tutor and Senior Lecturer in Music at the Open University's Northern Region at Newcastle upon Tyne. He is also the founder and co-ordinating editor of the journal Popular Music.
Bibliography
- (1972). Pop Music and the Blues. Gollancz.
- (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335152759.
--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Middleton_%28musicologist%29 [Mar 2005]
Studying Popular Music (1990/2002) - Richard Middleton
Studying Popular Music (1990/2002) - Richard Middleton [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Synopsis
As interest in popular music has increased, so the need for better ways of studying it has become more urgent. It is the author's contention that popular music can be properly understood only through an interdisciplinary method, and this book aims to demonstrate this through a critical analysis of issues and approaches in a variety of areas, ranging from the political economy of popular music through its history and ethnography to its semiology, aesthetics and ideology. The focus of the book is on Anglo-American popular music of the last two hundred years, more especially of the 20th century. In Part One the author outlines a "historical map" of this field, offering on the way a constructive critique of existing musical histories, of T.W.Adorno's pessimistic picture of music in 20th century "mass culture", and of various theories of musical production and reproduction in contemporary capitalist societies. Part Two turns to the analysis of popular music, looking in turn at approaches drawn from musicology, from folkloristics, anthropology and cultural studies, from structuralism and semiology, and from aesthetics, ideological analysis and psychoanalysis. --via Amazon.co.uk