In this provocative account Tia DeNora reconceptualizes the notion of genius by placing the life and career of Ludwig van Beethoven in its social context. She explores the changing musical world of late eighteenth-century Vienna and follows the activities of the small circle of aristocratic patrons who paved the way for the composer's success.

DeNora reconstructs the development of Beethoven's reputation as she recreates Vienna's robust musical scene through contemporary accounts, letters, magazines, and myths--a colorful picture of changing times. She explores the ways Beethoven was seen...

Theodor W. Adorno broached key questions about the role of music in contemporary society and argued that it affected consciousness and was a means of social management and control. Asserting that music sociology can be greatly enriched by returning to Adorno's focus on music as a dynamic medium of social life, this book considers cognition, the emotions and music as a management device.

The power of music in everyday life is widely recognized and this is reflected in social theory from Plato to Adorno that portrays music as an influence on character, social structure and action. This book uses a series of ethnographic studies and in-depth interviews to show how music is a constitutive feature of human agency. Drawing together concepts from psychology, sociology and sociolinguistics it develops a theory of music's active role in the construction of social life and highlights the aesthetic dimension of social order and organization in modern societies.

Theodor W. Adorno broached key questions about the role of music in contemporary society and argued that it affected consciousness and was a means of social management and control. Asserting that music sociology can be greatly enriched by returning to Adorno's focus on music as a dynamic medium of social life, this book considers cognition, the emotions and music as a management device.

What is reality and how do we make sense of it in everyday life? Why do some realities seem more real than others, and what of seemingly contradictory and multiple realities? This book considers reality as we represent, perceive and experience it. It suggests that the realities we take as 'real' are the result of real-time, situated practices that draw on and draw together many things - technologies and objects, people, gestures, meanings and media. Examining these practices illuminates reality (or rather our sense of it) as always 'virtually real', that is simplified and artfully produced....