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Jacques Attali

Jacques Attali Biography

Economist

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“It thus became almost impossible to have one's music heard without first being profitable, in other words, without writing commercial works known to the bourgeoisie. To be successful, a musician first had to attract an audience as an interpreter: representation takes precedence over composition and conditions it. The only authorized composers were successful interpreters of the works of others.”

MusicPolitical Science
Book:Noise: The Political Economy of Music
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“There is no communication possible between men any longer, now that the codes have been destroyed, including even the code of exchange in repetition. We are all condemned to silence - unless we create our own relation with the world and try to tie other people into the meaning we thus create. That is what composing is. Doing solely for the sake of doing, without trying artificially to recreate the old codes in order to reinsert communication into them. Inventing new codes, inventing the message at the same time as the language. Playing for one's own pleasure, which alone can create the conditions for new communication. A concept such as this seems natural in the context of music. But it reaches far beyond that; it relates to the emergence of the free act, self-transcendence, pleasure of being instead of having.”

MusicCreativityCommunicationNoiseSelf Transcendence
Book:Noise: The Political Economy of Music
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“En 1947, la pile électrique et le transistor, innovations capitales, rendent portables la radio et le tourne-disque. Révolution majeure, car elles permettent au jeunes de danser hors des bals, donc hors de la présence des parents, libérant la sexualité, ouvrant à toutes nouvelles musiques, du jazz au rock, annonçant l'entrée des jeunes dans l'univers de la consommation, du désir, de la révolte.”

Musique
Book:Une brève histoire de l'avenir
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“What is called music today is all too often only a disguise for the monologue of power. However, and this is the supreme irony of it all, never before have musicians tried so hard to communicate with their audience, and never before has that communication been so deceiving. Music now seems hardly more than a somewhat clumsy excuse for the self-glorification of musicians and the growth of a new industrial sector.”

SelfHardSeemsTodayGrowthAudienceCommunicationMusicianCommunicateExcuseSupremeIronyDeceivingDisguiseClumsyMonologuesGlorificationSelf Glorification
Author:Jacques Attali
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“For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible. Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.”

MenWorldLooksHappensLife IsForgetFiveCenturyEssentialsTwentiesSilentWesternHearingAbsenceNoiseAbstractBeastLook UpTwenty Five
Book:Noise: The Political Economy of Music
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