As one of the original pioneering composers of the American experimental music movement and a well known scholar of classics, Christian Wolff has long been active as a significant thinker and elegant writer on music. With Occasional Pieces, Wolff brings together a collection of his most notable writings and interviews from 1950 to the present, shining a new light on American music of the second half of the twentieth century. The collection opens with some of his earliest writings on his craft, discussing his own proto-minimalist compositional procedures and the music and ideas that led him to develop these techniques. Organized chronologically to give a sense of the development of Wolff's thinking on music over the course of his career, some of the pieces delve into connections of music-making to social and political issues, and the concept of indeterminacy as it applies to performance, while others offer insights into the work of Wolff's notable contemporaries including John Cage, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, David Tudor, Frederic Rzewski, Cornelius Cardew , Dieter Schnebel, Pauline Oliveros, and Merce Cunningham. An invaluable resource for historians, composers, listeners and students alike, Occasional Pieces offers a deep dive into Christian Wolff's musical world and brings new light to the history of the American experimental movement.

Occasional Pieces: Writings and Interviews, 1952-2013

Arts & Photography

Wolff, Christian

Music

Oxford University Press

Institutions du droit de la nature et des gens: Dans lesquelles, par une chaine continue, on déduit de la nature même de l'homme, toutes ses obligations & tous ses droits (French Edition)

Luzac, Elie

History

Wentworth Press

The Law of Nations Treated According to the Scientific Method (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics)

Christian Wolff’s The Law of Nations is a cornerstone of eighteenth-century thought. A treatise on the philosophy of human action, on the foundations of political communities, and on international law, it influenced philosophers throughout the eighteenth-century Enlightenment world. According to Knud Haakonssen, general editor of the Natural Law and Enlightenment series, “before Kant’s critical philosophy, Wolff was without comparison the most influential German thinker for several decades as well as a major European figure.” One of the most striking features of The Law of Nations is Wolff’s single-minded dedication to what he calls the “scientific method.” Though different from what we understand by that today, Wolff’s method still focuses on the illumination of truth via a step-by-step, logical examination of what is already known in order to explain what is unknown. As such, The Law of Nations is Wolff’s triumphant synthesis of his scientific method and his observations regarding the operations of nations. It examines the full gamut of national functions: what duties nations have to themselves and to each other, how national ownership should be viewed, how treaties should be formed, and how nations should act in both war and peace. Though Wolff’s contemporaries in authority did not always accept his ideas—he was banished from the lands of the king of Prussia for seventeen years for his radical notions regarding moral obligation and human free will—his influence ultimately spread across Europe, shaping philosophical study in many German, Dutch, and Scandinavian universities especially. The Liberty Fund edition of The Law of Nations is the first in English since the 1934 translation by Joseph H. Drake. Thomas Ahnert has revised and corrected that translation for readability and accuracy and has also added footnotes that explain the many references and technical terms Wolff uses throughout the text. Thomas Ahnert is Reader and Head of History at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Among his publications are The Moral Culture of the Scottish Enlightenment, 1690–1805, an edition of Thomasius’s Institutes of Divine Jurisprudence, and Religion and the Origins of the German Enlightenment.

Foreign & International Law

Liberty Fund, Inc.

The first English translation of Part 1 of the German eighteenth-century philosopher Christian Wolff's Ontology (1730). Considered one of the seminal thinkers of the German Enlightenment―a group that included Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Moses Mendelssohn, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and Immanuel Kant―Wolff exerted his influence on the German Enlightenment through his development of a rationalist system of knowledge in which all the propositions of science are demonstrated from first principles. By grounding metaphysics in mathematics, detangling it from the Scholastics' focus on the supernatural (that which is beyond the physical), and making ontology the first philosophy―elevating it above metaphysics as a science that subsumes metaphysics (i.e., natural theology) as well as psychology and cosmology―he took the first significant steps towards a Philosophy of Enlightenment. Translated, annotated, and with an introduction by Klaus Ottmann.

First Philosophy, or Ontology: Treated according to the Scientific Method, Containing the Principles of All Human Cognition

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Spring Publications, Inc.

Psychologia Empirica: Methodo Scientifica Pertractata ...... (Latin Edition)

Vernünfftige Gedancken von den Kräfften des menschlichen Verstandes und ihrem richtigen Gebrauche in Erkäntniss der Wahrheit. (German Edition)

Europe

Legare Street Press

Psychologia Rationalis Methodo Scientifica Pertractata Qua Ea, Quae De Anima Humana (1734) (Latin Edition)

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Psychologia Rationalis Methodo Scientifica Pertractata Qua Ea, Quae De Anima Humana (Latin Edition)

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Kessinger Pub

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Anmerkungen Uber Die Vernunftigen Gedancken Von Gott, Der Welt Und Der Seele Des Menschen (1724)

Kessinger Publishing, LLC

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