Sounds of Touch

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 3 analyzes touch sounds as music. It is organized as a north-south tour of the body, from fingertips to toes. The traversal begins with motivic fingernail clicks in Chapman Nyaho’s recording of Dett and Arrau’s recording of Beethoven. Fingertip placement sounds are exemplified by the Guarneri Quartet’s recording of Schubert. The location of Nelsova’s hammer-ons is related to the tonality in a cello courante by Bach. The relationship between harmonic form and classical guitar squeaks is demonstrated by recordings of Tárrega by Archilés, Hartzell, and Bream. The sounded movement of clacking tuba valves are charted in Brown’s recording of Gomez. The sounded movements of Gould’s creaking piano chair are related to the emergence of metric clarity in music by Schoenberg. Two foot-related sounds are contrasted: Walter’s podium stamps while conducting music by Mahler and the piano damper pedal sounds in Scriabin recordings by Chung, Arnold, and Hewitt.