Modern or Postmodern? (Aesthetic and Cultural Shift) Modernism Musical expression reflects 20th-century character Intellectual debt to Wagner (logic of history) Legitimate originality in art was inherently progressive, oppositional and critical “To each age its art: to art, its freedom” Precursors of musical modernism Mahler Debussy Skryabin R. Strauss Modernist Credo: Varèse “I dream of instruments obedient to my thought and which, with their contribution of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds, will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm…the very newness of the mechanism of life is forcing our activities and our forms of human association to break with the traditions and methods of the past in the effort to adapt themselves to circumstances.” Modernism demanded the shattering of… Expectations Conventions Categories Boundaries Limits Modernism challenged… Tonality Rhythmic regularity Traditional instruments Sonic effects Traditional forms Beauty in sound Meaning in musical expression Modernism: the continuing search for… New systems of pitch organization New instruments, often the result of technological advances Russolo (1913): “We must break out of this narrow circle of pure musical sounds, and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds.”

New instruments… Theremin (1920) Ondes Martenot (1928) Synthesizer Computer Modernist aesthetic Ambition Uniquely new (originality) in music Antidote to bourgeois tastes (to music as comforting entertainment) Transformative power and ethical character of true musical art A new rationalism and critical formalism… Clarity Objectivity Historical & stylistic critical approach Anti-sentimentalism Scholarly objectivity Musical modernism… Was to combat the domination and corrupting influence of business interests in the art Did not alter the tastes of 20th-century mass culture Together with innovations in the other arts questioned the conventional subject-object construct After World War I… The shock of the devastation and carnage, in addition to the instability and hardship of the postwar years, deepened the impulse among composers, particularly in France and Germany, to use art as a vehicle for protest and criticism By 1933, five distinct strands of musical modernism existed: Schoenberg and his followers (Berg & Webern) French-Russian, dominated by Stravinsky German Expressionists including Busoni & Hindemith Various national modernists: Ives, Bartok, Janacek, etc. Experimentalism (Varèse, Cowell, etc.) that led to interest in microtonality, ambient sounds, machines, and non-Western music After World War II… Adorno regarded Schoenberg and his school as the only true and historically valid progressive school of composition If music were to follow its true historical logic and fulfill its political and ethical function, it had to resist the regressive habits of listening and the fetishistic use of music characteristic of advanced capitalism.

The 1950s… In the 1950s Milton Babbitt (and others) argued that a mass public was irrelevant and construed the isolation of Modernism from the general public and its new status as music for an elite as a virtue. “Who cares if you listen?” After 1945, the implications of Webern’s music became emblematic of Modernism. Darmstadt The majority of postwar Europeans followed the path charted by Schoenberg, Berg & Webern The Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt was fertile ground for the development of these ideas during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. 1960s… Populist political radicalism shattered the linkage between Modernism and progressive politics Rock and folk music became the vehicle for political activism Composers became more eclectic, pluralism came to characterize the evolution of 20th-century concert music Late 20th century… Technological advances Modernist music suffers as the piano is replaced by the radio and gramophone as the central instrument of music culture Composers abandoned Modernism because of its inability to secure a significant public Boulez and IRCAM in Paris continue to sustain Modernism today

Postmodernism (Regressive or Progressive?) Postmodernism Reflects a crisis of cultural authority and world view A growing ecological sensitivity encouraged a broad critique of modernity Cage questioned the concept of artistic genius (developed in the Renaissance) and the notion of music as organized sound. Decentralization A shift from imperialist centralization, nation states and utopian philosophies to a decentralized world economy, supranational entities and relativism Postmodernism challenges assumptions about Modernism… Faith in progress Absolute truth Emphasis on form/genre over social function Postmodern style prefers… Discontinuity over continuity Difference over similarity Indeterminacy over rational logic Postmodern music… Collage Juxtaposition Appropriation Quotation Puts forward the unpresentable in the presentation itself. Postmodern attitude… Disdains analytic or perceptual unity and embraces other forms of order Reaction against the Eurocentricity and exclusivity of Modernism Suspicious of institutions and technology (modernists were established in powerful institutions and they used computers to increase their control over musical materials) Cultural politics Differences Gender Global awareness Those “whose histories have prepared them to make productive use of contradictions, to embrace the dynamism of difference and diversity.”

Music’s Expressive Potential Rejecting need for change and originality Embracing accessibility (turning away from increasingly difficult and often intellectual approach to music) Return to tonality Use of quotation (of older works) Integration of popular idioms NeoRomanticism Conservatism Tonality Spirituality Radical Postmodernism Questioning cultural codes Deconstruction of the “master narratives” of tonality Use of continuous repetition to create non-narrative works that subvert the role of long-term memory in the perception of a work’s structure Connection/Interpenetration Eclectic inclusion of material, often through quotation Quotation of predecessors’ and contemporaries’ music to comment on the history of musical traditions Embodying multiple times through many memories Collision of… New with Old Original with Borrowed Serious with Popular Aesthetic with Non-aesthetic Politically central with marginal Collage “both/and” instead of “either/or” “The play of intelligent anarchy” (Cage) Juxtaposition of jazz, swing, pop, reggae, film/TV soundtracks, etc. in Zorn’s designed to challenge traditional expectations of music Transforming the listening experience Performance Art Juxtapositions of autobiography, story-telling, self-reference, and a collage of myriad personal tastes Pop inflection challenges the troubling contradictions in American culture

Reception In a complex world of contradictory forces Reevaluation of the idea of art No more “works,” only “texts” or pretexts for what the listener may bring 4’33’’ Deep listening Composition or Performance? Blurring the boundaries between composition and performance Transformative power of improvisation The Musical Experience The need to acknowledge more than the rational/cerebral in music Shared roles of composer/performer/listener in the creation of musical meaning Multiplicity of approaches/styles/referents Responses to music are as “diverse, unstable, and open-ended as the multitude of contexts in which music defines itself.” Postmodern music Challenges the longstanding bias towards studying art music as distinct from other traditions Encourages listeners to explore their own experience of music