First thoughts on Katz

Just one little post tonight.

Here's a quote from Mark Katz's book Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004):

Performances and works are no longer clearly distinct, for recordings can take on the function and meaning of both. Just as recordings can be heard as spontaneous interpretive acts, their repetition can transform them into compositions, works that can be analyzed, historicized, canonized, politicized, and problematized. Nor are production and reproduction so easily separated when preexisting sounds can be manipulated in real time. With recording, listeners need not simply receive music, for they have an unprecedented control over the sounds they hear. While there have always been composer-performers--artists who interpret their own works--with recording we can conceive of listener-performers and listener-composers. Recording thus not only affects the practice of music, it shapes the very way in which we think about music: what it is, can, and should be (47).

Somehow I don't think traditional cataloging practices can keep up with this new thinking. You can also read broadcasts and shows in place of performances and works; and radio or media in place of recordings. Boggles the mind, huh? This may be a new era, but as Katz points out, the change has been in the works for over a century now.