The Ambient Century: From Mahler to Moby--The Evolution of Sound in the Electronic Age [Paperback]

Mark Prendergast (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 3, 2003

The Ambient Century is the definitive chronicle of a century of musical change. Encyclopedic, yet with a strong narrative, Mark Prendergast covers such diverse artists as Gustav Mahler, Philip Glass, New Order, and Moby. Lively, compelling, and authoritative-and boasting an unmatched discography-The Ambient Century is a treat for music lovers of all kinds. With an introduction by electronic music pioneer Brian Eno.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Just as anything evolves when its setting changes, 20th-century music mutated as it moved beyond the confines of concert halls and into listeners' everyday environs. Thanks to car stereos, headphones, even computers, people now move within their own soundtracks. In this chronology of compositional innovations, Prendergast, an internationally published music writer, details the widening of sonic possibilities with advancements in recording, amplification and electronic instruments, and with the creative talents of hundreds of bold, brilliant composers. He credits Mahler with first evoking the hypnotic "ambient experience of landscape and emotion," kicking off the century of "repetitive conceptual music." Prendergast describes how, after a four-day fast, the sound of a single piano tone proved revelatory for Karlheinz Stockhausen; how sitarist Ravi Shankar influenced everyone from minimalist Philip Glass to the Beatles; how Donna Summer "merged Germanicity with black music's long history"; and how scores of house and techno artists have "moved the focus of the music away from its creators towards the listener." Organized by artist, the book provides suggested "Listenings" for each one, as well as a list of the "Essential 100 Recordings," which recommends ambient guru John Cage's "In a Landscape," megastar Bowie's absorbing "Low" and Goldie's "Timeless," a debut that brought ambient jungle/drum and bass into the mainstream. Talking Heads' producer Brian Eno, a maverick whose own music heavily influenced New Age and ambient house music, gives the book his stamp of approval in his foreword. B&w photos. Agent, Simon Trewin of Drury House, London.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Here, Irish music critic Prendergast makes an admirable and largely successful attempt to build bridges between the worlds of contemporary classical and rock music. But as the author never clearly defines or describes the term ambient, the reader is left to infer the connections among composers and genres. Prendergast divides his subject into four large sections: "The Electronic Landscape," "Minimalism, Brian Eno, and the New Simplicity," "Ambience in the Rock Era," and "House, Techno, and Twenty-First Century Ambience." The first is the most problematic section, as many of the observations here are simplistic and the listening lists too quirky and subjective to be useful. Prendergast is on much surer footing in the three subsequent sections, however. The text is packed with a wealth of detailed information and cogent observations on minimalist composers, rock personalities, technological innovations, and movers and shakers in the various worlds of contemporary music. Prendergast has an astonishing grasp of the global scene in popular music and writes with authority and conviction. Despite its flaws, this is an important addition to libraries with holdings in cultural and popular studies.DLarry Lipkis, Moravian Coll. Bethlehem, PA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 500 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (September 3, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582343233
• ISBN-13: 978-1582343235
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,958,542 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #46 in Books > Arts & Photography > Music > Theory, Composition & Performance > Sheet Music & Scores > Composers > Mahler

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars an eclectic encyclopedia, not a coherent analysis, March 27, 2001

By 

R. Hutchinson "autonomeus" (a world ruled by fossil fuels and fossil minds) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ambient Century: From Mahler to Trance: The Evolution of Sound in the Electronic Age (Hardcover)

Your evaluation of THE AMBIENT CENTURY will depend on what you're looking for. I expected serious analysis, and by that criteria would give it 1 star. If what you're interested in, though, is an eclectic encyclopedia of interesting 20th century musicians, loosely grouped by the theme of "ambience," which is never defined, then you might think this is great. (I can't comment on the fact-checking criticism, but to me it's a secondary point.) Prendergast moves from "high art" composers including Debussy and Stockhausen, to "minimalism," to rock, broken into categories such as psychedelic, krautrock and synthesizer music, to the '90s techno/house/drum&bass/ambient trend.

However, his definition of "ambient" involves "music being deconstructed" by Mahler and Debussy (sounds really "postmodern," but what does it mean?), and developments in technology/electronics, along with an "interest in pure sound." He pronounces: "[T]he bleeding heart of electronic progress had by its very nature rendered all recorded music, by definition, Ambient." (4) Given this sort of cosmic perspective Prendergast could have included all music, and what he does include seems to be more or less "cool stuff that I like." Harsh, I know, but does Bob Dylan's "Knocking on Heaven's Door," by any stretch of the conceptual imagination, belong on a list of the Essential 100 Recordings of 20th Century Ambient Music? If so, our author fails to offer any explanation. How about Led Zeppelin IV (ie, ZOSO)? I'm at a loss.

If the book was appropriately titled, I would have much less to criticize. But when you title a book "The Evolution of Sound in the Electronic Age," you lead the reader to expect some sort of theoretical analysis -- what sort of evolution? In what direction? What mechanisms are involved? But there is "no there there" if what is happening is just technological progress, and "an interest in pure sound" may characterize Cage's famous *4'33"* (the silent composition), but there is not even an attempt here to argue that it is the direction of 20th century music. If Prendergast really means to emphasize the use of music as background, where is his discussion of Muzak, and music in advertising? He doesn't develop his embryonic theme(s), but rather rushes headlong into profiles of musicians, which are strung together with little connecting analysis.

Caveat emptor -- if you're looking for serious analysis, look elsewhere, but if you want a breezy journalistic encyclopedia of non-mainstream music (that is seen as cool by The Wire magazine) you might find this a useful reference work. (For a model of analysis of cutting edge music, check out Nyman's EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC. It also has a foreward by Brian Eno!)

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Errors In the Ambient Century, December 9, 2000

By 

Derek Pierce (Bath ,England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ambient Century (Paperback)

I bought this book having read a review in "The Wire" magazine, the review said the book was bad, but I did'nt believe it and bought it. I have since read it and can honestly say that I have never read a book with so many factual mistakes in it. As the writer of a "History of Electronic Music" for a magazine and a lecturer in Computer music I would suggest that you do not buy this book until all the errors have been corrected. A typical example, "Robert Fripp studied JG Bennett at Sherborne House, Dorset", the Sherborne House where he studied Bennett is in Gloucestershire,near Cheltenham. Another "EMS produced the "Portobello" synth, it was in fact called the PUTNEY. There are many more mistakes which makes the book difficult to recommend to my students or indeed anyone else until such time as it has been corrected.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Ambient soup, August 29, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Ambient Century: From Mahler to Trance: The Evolution of Sound in the Electronic Age (Hardcover)

The title alone ought to be enough to suggest the daunting scope of Mark Prendergast's exploration of sound in the 20th Century. Prendergast argues that an "Ambient" tendency links together most of the musical output of the century, from Debussy to Derrick May and beyond. Rather than a single narrative, The Ambient Century is pieced together out of biographical segments and overviews of genres. And he squeezes it all in, beginning with the electronic pioneers (Theremin, Stockhausen, Subotnick) moving through Minimalism, "Ambience in the Rock Era" (encompassing the Beach Boys and the Stones but also the Dead, Krautrock, New Wave and even Enya), and ending with 100 pages on house, techno, and the broader scope of popular electronic music.

While the earlier chapters may provide interesting background for readers interested in the 20th Century avant garde, the book ultimately proves a disappointment. For anyone immersed in house, techno, drum'n'bass, or any other form of contemporary electronic music - commercial or experimental - the reading seems cursory at best. Prendergast sticks to the big names - in drum'n'bass, for instance, he dwells on Goldie and LTJ Bukem, ignoring less famous originators and more recent developments. To devote a page to DJ Rap at the expense of more influential producers seems short-sighted at best. House and techno are both treated as dead genres, barely breaking out of the historical contexts (early 90s Chicago and Detroit) with which they're associated, and with little insight into the subsequent fragmentation of genres and subgenres. (His earlier chapters, while more informed, suffer from similar flaws - Subotnick's entry barely hints at the philosophy behind the composer's music; La Monte Young's follows the official Youngian party line in casting Tony Conrad as bit player).

Ultimately, even greater methodological flaws mar Prendergast's account. His valorization of individual auteurs ignores the labels which often did as much, if not more, to further the development of particular sounds. He suffers from a lack of fact-checking. His historicism is simplistic at best - his treatment of the Compact Disc seems cribbed straight from a Philips corporate backgrounder, emphasizing the format's alleged superiority with little heed for its drawbacks, ignoring the corporate strongarm strategies (like price-fixing) that led to its dominance, and falling back on utopian pronouncements akin to a kind of digital "end-of-history." Sure, after the advent of the CD "there was just more music around for everybody," but how much is this due to the medium - and how much to the majors' aggressive marketing and enforced obsolescence of vinyl? Where Simon Reynolds has developed a complex (if controversial) linkage between drug consumption and music production, Prendergast - without citing him - falls back on a simplistic determinism, resulting in statements like "Trip-Hop was the product of post-club marijuana consumption." And he suffers from the habit of capitalizing neologized non-genres like "Trip Jazz," as if to grant them legitimacy.

Finally, Prendergast's very thesis is barely spelled out. Presumably, his concept of the Ambient refers to the ascendancy of sound-for-sound's-sake in the 20th Century. He probably has something in this, but without a more rigorous examination of the technological, sociological, economic and above all formal aspects linking, say, John Cage, the Beach Boys, King Tubby, and Aphex Twin, his book remains a collection of half-developed snapshots.