David Toop, Ocean of Sound ***

Ocean of Sound advertises itself as a history of ambient music, with a particularly inclusive definition of the genre. As Toop says in his author's note, "I think of it now as a Trojan Horse, early-90s ambient music serving as a device to disguise a far more expansive narrative about twentieth-century experimental music of all persuasions."

For Toop, "ambient" refers to the interpenetration of (intentionally composed) music and the surrounding background. Ambient music in the Brian Eno sense is composed music intended to supplement or "tint" the environment; other musicians incorporate natural sounds and non-traditional instruments; yet others shift the listener's attention to the listening context, like Cage's 4'33". "This blurring of the edges between music and environmental sounds may eventually prove to be the most striking feature of all twentieth-century music" (R. Murray Schafer, The Tuning of the World).

Toop extends his premise beyond its breaking point by interpreting other notable aspects of twentieth-century music as examples of the same tendency; for example the post-modern blurring of genres, boundless trance-like compositions, and electronic music in general. All of these innovations serve the contradictory impulses of listening to the entire soundscape as music and helping music lift free from its earthbound context. Twentieth-century music shifts the focus from the intentions of the genius musician to the active participation of the listener. 

Ultimately Toop did not provide me with a new way of listening or introduce me to new artists I am compelled to check out. 

Masashi Matsuie, The Summer House ****

The Summer House tells a low-key story about a small Japanese architectural firm creating a design proposal for a National Library of Modern Literature. To escape from the bustle and heat of Tokyo, they repair to a small village in the mountains.

The book is all about mood, with special attention paid to the soundscape. A light breeze carries bird song into the workshop where the architects work to get the curve of a banister just right, the only sound their pencils on paper. There is just enough plot to move us from one relaxing scene to another and to tie together the metaphorical conversations they have about craftsmanship and about balancing tradition with innovation.

The experience of reading The Summer House reminded me of watching a documentary about traditional craftsmen. It's a pleasure to observe their quiet artistry, to celebrate the care they take.

Wolfram Eilenberger, Time of the Magicians *** 1/2

Like Herald of a Restless World, which I recently read, Time of the Magicians is a biography of early 20th-century philosophers that also seeks to capture the spirit of the times. The subtitle refers to "the decade that reinvented philosophy." The titular magicians are Ludwig Wittgenstein, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Cassirer, and Martin Heidegger; the decade is 1919 to 1929.

Time of the Magicians improves on Herald of a Restless World by diving deeper into its subjects' ideas and, most importantly, by presenting them as idiosyncratic and compelling characters. However, Eilenberger failed to convince me that they, collectively or individually, "reinvented philosophy." Wittgenstein and Heidegger are surely influential figures, but they were inflection points within continuing traditions.

Despite Eilenberger's efforts to tie together the philosophies of his four protagonists, I didn't see them as asking the same questions, nor did I feel the importance of the issues they addressed. I remain mystified by Heidegger, but I can't fault the author for falling short on the impossible task of explaining Dasein. Philosophically, I was most intrigued by Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, despite Cassirer being presented as the old-school conservative of the bunch. 

A tangential point that I found interesting was about the Weimar Republic that ruled Germany at the time:

The republic itself, with its democratic form of government, was held in the dominant narrative to be foreign, imported from the histories of the victorious nations of the United States, France, and England... From this point of view the Weimar Constitution was not a gift but...a kind of permanent collateral damage from the outcome of the war.