Translationality in Music

This is a book about music, more specifically about the experience of music. It is about the physical experience of expressing sounds through an instrument, the cognitive experience of reading a written score as opposed to playing by ear, and also about the more passive experience of listening to music, and the way it affects our body in different ways.

But it is also a book about translation, more precisely, about the translational processes involved in all the above. For if we consider that music is a fleeting artform, one that is auditory in nature and unfolds in time, it becomes clear that the process of communicating it to others, whether live or via manuscripts or recordings, implies multiple acts of translation involving different codes and media. Drawing on a range of musics from western art and popular music to Amerindian dance-songs and computer-generated compositions, it discusses issues such as musical interpretation, manuscript editing, improvisation, covers and remixes, and arrangements and adaptations, all from a translational perspective.

As such, this book will be of interest not only to translation scholars, musicologists and students, but also to anyone with a love of music, whether from a performer’s or a listener’s perspective.