Rhetoric Society Quarterly Oct 2018

Aristotle’s Cough: Rhetoricity, Refrain, and Rhythm in Minimalist Music

Sarah Elizabeth Adams

Abstract

This article considers how rhetoricians might access rhetoricity, that which precedes and pervades meaning. The three pieces of minimalist music I examine—Steve Reich’s It’s Gonna Rain, Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting in a Room, and Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach—experiment with speech, peeling back the meaning-filled dimension of language in order to expose how affect and material move people. This peeling back of meaning, my analysis suggests, is achieved through refrain and rhythm, two forceful sonic rhetorical phenomena that rhetoricians might both study and deploy.

Journal
Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Published
2018-10-20
DOI
10.1080/02773945.2018.1439996
Open Access
Closed
Topics
rhetorical theory

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Poole (2023)
    Witnessing the Open Semiosis: A Method for Rhetorical Listening beyond the Human
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly

Cites in this index (3)

  1. Alexander (2015)
    Glenn Gould and the Rhetorics of Sound
    Computers and Composition
  2. Gunn et al. (2013)
    Auscultating Again: Rhetoric and Sound Studies
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  3. Halbritter (2006)
    Musical rhetoric in integrated-media composition
    Computers and Composition
Also cites 10 works outside this index ↓
  1. Comentale Edward P. (2013)
    Sweet Air: Modernism, Regionalism, and American Popular Song
     ↗
  2. 10.1215/9780822391852
     ↗
  3. 10.2307/j.ctt5vkfx1
     ↗
  4. 10.1215/9780822374695
     ↗
  5. Kassabian Anahid. (2013)
    Ubiquitous Listening: Affect, Attention, and Distributed Subjectivity
     ↗
  6. Murray Joddy. (2009)
    Non-Discursive Rhetoric: Image and Affect in Multimodal Composition
     ↗
  7. Nealon Jeffrey T. (2012)
    Post-Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Just-In-Time Capitalism
     ↗
  8. Panagia Davide. (2009)
    The Political Life of Sensation
     ↗
  9. 10.2307/j.ctt5hjqwx
     ↗
  10. 10.1215/9780822390404
     ↗
CrossRef global citation count: 1 View in citation network →

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