If I can be permitted to brag for a moment... I just finished my PhD exams last month, and one of the lists that I was working through/being tested on was focused on noise/sound theory and art history. I thought that some here might be interested in the list of books that I put together.
Adorno, Theodor. "Farewell to Jazz." In Essays on Music, edited by Richard Lepert and
translated by Susan H. Gillespie, 496-500. Berkeley: University of California Press,
2002.
———. "Music, Language, and Composition." In Essays on Music, edited by Richard Lepert
and translated by Susan H. Gillespie, 113-26. Berkeley: University of California Press,
2002.
———. "On Jazz." In Essays on Music, edited by Richard Lepert and translated by Susan H.
Gillespie, 470-95. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
———. "On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music." In Essays on Music,
edited by Richard Lepert and translated by Susan H. Gillespie, 135-61. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
———. "On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening." In Essays on
Music, edited by Richard Lepert and translated by Susan H. Gillespie, 288-317. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
———. "On the Social Situation of Music." In Essays on Music, edited by Richard Lepert and
translated by Susan H. Gillespie, 391-436. Berkeley: University of California Press,
2002.
———. "Why Is the New Art So Hard to Understand?" In Essays on Music, edited by Richard
Lepert and translated by Susan H. Gillespie, 127-34. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
Artaud, Antonin. The Theater and Its Double. Translated by Mary Caroline Richards. New
York: Grove Press, 1958.
Attali, Jacques. Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Translated by Brian Massumi.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Bailey, Thomas Bey William. Micro Bionic: Radical Electronic Music & Sound Art in the 21st
Century. Belsona Books, Ltd. 2012.
Baron, Lawrence. "Noise and Degeneration: Theodor Lessing's Crusade for Quiet." Journal of
Contemporary History 17, no. 1 (1982): 165-78.
Bataille, Georges. "Formless." In Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, edited and
translated by Allan Stoekl, 31. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985.
Beckett, Samuel. Krapp's Last Tape and Other Dramatic Pieces. New York: Grove Press, 1960.
Benjamin, Walter. "The Telephone." In The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological
Reproducibility and Other Writings on Media, edited by Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin, 77-8. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008.
Bonnet, François J. The Order of Sounds: A Sonorous Archipelago. Translated by Robin Mackay.
Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2016.
Bowie, Andrew. Music, Philosophy, and Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2009.
Chessa, Luciano. Luigi Russolo, Futurist: Noise, Visual Arts, and the Occult. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2012.
Chion, Michel. Sound: An Acoulogical Treatise. Translated by James Steintrager. Durham: Duke
University Press, 2016.
Cox, Christoph and Daniel Warner. Audio Culture: Revised Edition. New York: Bloomsbury
Academic, 2017.
Crawley, Ashon T. Blackpentacostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility. New York: Fordham
University Press, 2016.
Deleuze, Gilles. "The Exhausted." Translated by Anthony Uhlmann. Substance 24, no. 3 (1995):
3-28.
———. The Logic of Sense. Translated by Mark Lester and Charles Stivale. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1993.
Demers, Joanna. Listening Through the Noise: The Aesthetics of Experimental Modern Music.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Eidsheim, Nina Sun. Sensing Sound: Singing and Listening as Vibrational Practice. Durham:
Duke University Press, 2015.
———. The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre, and Vocality in African American
Music. Durham: Duke University Press, 2019.
Goddard, Michael, Benjamin Halligan, and Paul Hegarty, eds. Reverberations: The Philosophy,
Aesthetics, and Politics of Noise. London: Continuum, 2012.
Graham, Stephen. Becoming Noise Music: Style, Aesthetics, and History. New York:
Bloomsbury Academic, 2024.
Hagood, Mack. Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control. Durham: Duke University Press, 2019.
Hegarty, Paul. Annihilating Noise. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.
———. Noise/Music: A History. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2007.
Ikoniadou, Eleni. The Rhythmic Event: Art, Media, and the Sonic. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2023.
Khan, Douglas. Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts. Cambridge: MIT Press,
2001.
Keenan, David. England's Hidden Reverse: A Secret History of the Esoteric Underground.
London: Strange Attractor Press, 2023.
Krapp, Peter. Noise Channels: Glitch and Error in Digital Culture. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2011.
Kulvicki, John. "The Nature of Noise." Philosophers' Imprint 8, no. 11 (November 2008): 1-16.
Malabou, Catherine. "The Mental State of Noise: Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia or Should We Stop
the Brain's Noise?" Angelaki 28, no. 3 (June 2023): 95-9.
Moten, Fred. In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
Nancy, Jean-Luc. Listening. Translated by Charlotte Mandell. New York: Fordham University
Press, 2007.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner. Translated by Walter
Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.
Novak, David. Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation. Durham: Duke University Press,
2013.
Priest, Eldritch. Boring Formless Nonsense: Experimental Music and the Aesthetics of Failure.
New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.
Reed, S. Alexander. Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2013.
Russolo, Luigi. The Art of Noises. Translated by Barclay Brown. New York: Pendragon Press,
1986.
Serres, Michel. Genesis. Translated by Geneviève James and James Nielson. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1998.
Shannon, Claude. The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Champaign: University of
Illinois Press, 1998.
Talijan, Emilija. Resonant Bodies in Contemporary European Art Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2023.
Toop, David. Sinister Resonance: The Mediumship of the Listener. New York: Continuu, Books,
2011.
Vogelin, Salomé. Listening to Noise and Silence: Towards a Philosophy of Sound Art. New York:
Bloomsbury, 2010.
———. Sonic Possible Worlds: Revised Edition. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.
Weheliye, Alexander. Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity. Durham: Duke
University Press, 2005.
Wei, Sha Xin. "Noisiness, the Stuff of Thought." Angelaki 28, no. 3 (June 2023): 66-77.
