Voices of New Music on National Public Radio: Radio Net, RadioVisions, and Maritime Rites
type: CreativeWork
description: This dissertation focuses on the relationship between new American music and National Public Radio (NPR) during the 1970s and 1980s. NPR directly supported American experimental music, most often billed as "new music," through programming that both consolidated a tradition and extended it by commissioning new works. I address three exemplary broadcasts, proposing that public radio utilized existing historical narratives of musical experimentalism while simultaneously revising and strengthening those narratives. I demonstrate ways in which the shows themselves, as well as their planning phases and promotional materials, served to gather individuals and musical practices together, defining and constructing musical experimentalism in the process. Chapter 1 covers the importance of sonic experimentation in NPR's original Statement of Purposes, claiming that author William Siemering's attention to sound created a climate that was especially hospitable to musical and radiophonic experimentation. In Max Neuhaus's Radio Net (1977), NPR's very infrastructure became a musical instrument, showing the radical potential of NPR in its early days. Chapter 2 chronicles the production history of RadioVisions (1981) to establish the ways in which NPR's imaginary listeners were essential during its planning phase: in the conception of the show, in the grant proposal to the NEA, and in the show's content. I conclude that experimentalism's potential for imagining an NPR audience allowed "new music" to become "American experimental music" as the RadioVisions project moved through the infrastructure of NPR. Chapter 3 explores the cultural valences and authorities of the musical voices in RadioVisions's segments "Details at Eleven," "Shoptalk," and "The Oldest Instrument," as well as Schuller's hosting voice in the context of public radio broadcasting. Chapter 4 presents a history of the composition, production, and radio broadcast of Maritime Rites (1984). I argue that the differences bet…
abstract: This dissertation focuses on the relationship between new American music and National Public Radio (NPR) during the 1970s and 1980s. NPR directly supported American experimental music, most often billed as "new music," through programming that both consolidated a tradition and extended it by commissioning new works. I address three exemplary broadcasts, proposing that public radio utilized existing historical narratives of musical experimentalism while simultaneously revising and strengthening those narratives. I demonstrate ways in which the shows themselves, as well as their planning phases and promotional materials, served to gather individuals and musical practices together, defining and constructing musical experimentalism in the process. Chapter 1 covers the importance of sonic experimentation in NPR's original Statement of Purposes, claiming that author William Siemering's attention to sound created a climate that was especially hospitable to musical and radiophonic experimentation. In Max Neuhaus's Radio Net (1977), NPR's very infrastructure became a musical instrument, showing the radical potential of NPR in its early days. Chapter 2 chronicles the production history of RadioVisions (1981) to establish the ways in which NPR's imaginary listeners were essential during its planning phase: in the conception of the show, in the grant proposal to the NEA, and in the show's content. I conclude that experimentalism's potential for imagining an NPR audience allowed "new music" to become "American experimental music" as the RadioVisions project moved through the infrastructure of NPR. Chapter 3 explores the cultural valences and authorities of the musical voices in RadioVisions's segments "Details at Eleven," "Shoptalk," and "The Oldest Instrument," as well as Schuller's hosting voice in the context of public radio broadcasting. Chapter 4 presents a history of the composition, production, and radio broadcast of Maritime Rites (1984). I argue that the differences bet…
author: Chernosky, Louise Elizabeth
language: English
keywords: Music, History, Avant-garde (Music), National Public Radio (U.S.)
date published: 2012
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:44:20Z
provider: Columbia University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Columbia University

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.7916/D8Q52WPR