Text-Sound

This book is a history of early vocal art based in the 1970s. As Kostelanetz introduces it, “The art is text-sound, rather than sound-text, to acknowledge the initial presence of a text, which is subject to aural enhancements more typical of music. To be precise, it is by non-melodic auditory structures that language or verbal sounds are poetically charged with meanings or resonances they would not otherwise have.”

In other words (and sounds), you may view this book, and all of the artists it describes, as the opening up of a new artistic medium.