A Sound Word Almanac - by Bernd Herzogenrath (Paperback)

About the Book

"An almanac of sound words important to artists and scholars - words that expand the way we speak (and write) about sonic experiences"--

Book Synopsis

This almanac of sound words important to artists and scholars highlights words that expand the way we speak (and write) about sonic experiences.

Why write about sound, and how? If sonic philosophy is the attempt "to think about sound by philosophical means," then a metaphilosophical debate appears almost immediately on the horizon: What is called for is an understanding about sound and language, but also about the preconditions of musical understanding. What is at stake is the question of language and sound, as well as expanding how we speak about sonic experience.

This almanac tackles these questions from artistic, experimental and personal perspectives. An assemblage of nearly 70 practitioners and theoreticians, artists and scholars offer their favorite 'sound word.' These sound words are onomatopoetical, mythological, practical; words of personal importance to the artists and their craft; words from their memory, related to sound. Many entries are not in English - some are untranslatable - and all are accompanied by a personal, explanatory, poetic entry. These are words that have the potential to change our perspective on listening-musicking-thinking.

Review Quotes

Delving into the intricate relationships between language, sound, and our capacity to verbalize sonic experiences, A Sound Word Almanac invites readers into a vibrant exploration of auditory terminology, affording a fresh perspective on sound. Transcending the confines of conventional lexicons, this almanac embarks on an original linguistic expedition, offering a recollection of rare, unfamiliar, and largely unknown words. Emphasizing artistic, experimental, and personal perspectives from different languages and cultural spaces, this book is both original and unique, creating a whole new research field. Like a terminological colourful kaleidoscope, A Sound Word Almanacis a great read that will revamp your relationship with sound and sonic events.
Paulo de Assis, pianist, experimental performer, and Principal Investigator, Orpheus Institute, Belgium

The seemingly futile struggle of trying to describe sounds around us is truly revelatory in the hands of these thinkers. From raspy bird song to humming tops, sub bass wobble to Heã, Goception to geroezemoes, klang to musicistica, it's a magical and exotic lexicon from the imagined to the real.
Robin Rimbaud (Scanner), electronic musician and sound designer

This wonderful book invites us into dozens of fantastical sound worlds, each with its own local guide, anthropologist or storyteller eager to lead us through regions and languages real and imagined, human and non-human. We return from these travels delighted and amazed, equipped with a conceptual and sonic imagination vastly expanded and an auditory vocabulary wildly enriched.
Christoph Cox, Dean of Eugene Lang College, The New School, USA, and co-editor of Audio Culture, Revised Edition (Bloomsbury, 2017)

About the Author

Bernd Herzogenrath is Professor of American literature and culture at Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He is the author of An Art of Desire: Reading Paul Auster (1999) and An American BodyPolitic: A Deleuzian Approach (2010) and editor of The Farthest Place: The Music of John Luther Adams (2012) and DeleuzeGuattari & Ecology (2009). His latest publications include the collections The Films of Bill Morrison. Aesthetics of the Archive (2017), Film as Philosophy (2017), and Practical Aesthetics (Bloomsbury, 2020).