Keys to Play : Music as a Ludic Medium from Apollo to Nintendo / Roger Moseley.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 365-418) and index.

Prelude. Press any key to start -- Fields and interfaces of musical play. Ludomusicality. Orders of play ; Beyond work and play ; The sound of gunplay ; Bits and beats ; Playing undead -- Digital analogies. Apollo 1, Marsyas 0 ; Notes on keys ; Interface values ; (Key)board games and temperamental tactics ; Tristan's chord, Schoenberg's voice -- Play by play : improvisation, performance, recreation. The emergence of musical play. Unforeheard circumstances ; Pantomimes and partimenti ; From black box to glassy shell ; The case of Winkel's componium ; The invisible thumb on the scale -- High scores : WAM vs. LVB. Unsettled scores ; Mozart's two-player games ; Concerted action ; Mozart and Mario play the field ; Beethoven's recursive feedback loops -- Play again? Nintendo's brand of ludomusicality ; Analogous digitalities ; The ludomusical emergence of Toshio Iwai ; High scores: Nodame cantabile ; Replay : a cento.

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"How do keyboards make music playable? Drawing on theories of media, systems, and cultural techniques, Keys to play spans Greek myth and contemporary Japanese digital games to chart an archaeology of musical play and its animation via improvisation, performance, and recreation. As a paradigmatic digital interface, the keyboard forms a field of play on which the book's diverse objects of inquiry--from clavichords to PCs and eighteenth-century musical dice games to the latest rhythm-action titles--enter into analogical relations. Remapping the keyboard's topography by way of Mozart and Super Mario, who head an expansive cast of historical and virtual actors, Keys to play invites readers to unlock ludic dimensions of music that are at once old and new."--Provided by publisher.

Description based on print version record.