Postmodern music
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2008-07-11T11:57:46Z
Alan Parmenter
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{{Postmodernism}}
{{Refimprove|date=April 2008}}
'''Postmodern music''', music which is [[postmodernism|postmodern]], literal meaning music which follows [[modernism|modern]] music. As classification, therefore, it can share nothing with [[modern music]]: a work which is modern music cannot also be postmodern music, but a metaphorical border on [[modernism]] is what gives [[postmodernism]] its meaning.
==The postmodern musical attitude==
[[Jonathan Kramer]] posits the idea (following [[Umberto Eco]] and [[Jean-François Lyotard]]) that postmodernism (including ''musical'' postmodernism) is less a surface style or historical period (i.e., condition) than an ''attitude''. Kramer enumerates 16 "characteristics of postmodern music, by which I mean music that is understood in a postmodern manner, or that calls forth postmodern listening strategies, or that provides postmodern listening experiences, or that exhibits postmodern compositional practices." According to Kramer (Kramer 2002, 16–17), postmodern music:
# is not simply a repudiation of modernism or its continuation, but has aspects of both a break and an extension
# is, on some level and in some way, ironic
# does not respect boundaries between sonorities and procedures of the past and of the present
# challenges barriers between 'high' and 'low' styles
# shows disdain for the often unquestioned value of structural unity
# questions the mutual exclusivity of elitist and populist values
# avoids totalizing forms (e.g., does not want entire pieces to be tonal or serial or cast in a prescribed formal mold)
# considers music not as autonomous but as relevant to cultural, social, and political contexts
# includes quotations of or references to music of many traditions and cultures
# considers technology not only as a way to preserve and transmit music but also as deeply implicated in the production and essence of music
# embraces contradictions
# distrusts binary oppositions
# includes fragmentations and discontinuities
# encompasses pluralism and eclecticism
# presents multiple meanings and multiple temporalities
# locates meaning and even structure in listeners, more than in scores, performances, or composers
==Timescale==
One author has suggested that the transition in music from modern to postmodern occurred in the late 1960s, influenced in part by [[psychedelic rock]] and a late [[Beatles]] album (Sullivan 1995, 217), while others place the beginnings of musical postmodernism much earlier, around 1930 (Karolyi 1994, 135; Meyer 1994, 331–32).
==See also==
*[[20th century classical music]]
*[[Musical montage]]
*[[Plunderphonics]]
*[[Postmodern composers]]
*[[Sound collage]]
*[[Theodor Adorno]]
*[[Walter Benjamin]]
==Sources==
*Albright, Daniel. 2004. ''Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources''. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-01267-0.
*Danuser, Hermann. 1991. "Postmodernes Musikdenken—Lösung oder Flucht?". In ''Neue Musik im politischen Wandel: fünf Kongressbeiträge und drei Seminarberichte'', edited by Hermann Danuser, 56–66. Mainz & New York: Schott. ISBN 3795717728
*Heilbroner, Robert L. 1961. ''The Future as History''. New York: Grove Press.
*Jameson, Fredric. 1991. ''Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism''. Durham: Duke University Press. ISBN 0822309297 (cloth); ISBN 0822310902 (pbk)
*Karolyi, Otto. 1994. ''Modern British Music: The Second British Musical Renaissance—From Elgar to P. Maxwell Davies''. Rutherford, Madison, Teaneck: Farleigh Dickinson University Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses. ISBN 0-8386-3532-6
*Kramer, Jonathan. 2002. "The Nature and Origins of Musical Postmodernism." In ''Postmodern Music/Postmodern Thought'', edited by Judy Lochhead and Joseph Aunder,{{Fact|date=February 2008}}<!--Inclusive page numbers needed--> New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-8153-3820-1 Reprinted from ''Current Musicology'' 66 (1999): 7–20.
*Meyer, Leonard B. 1994. ''Music, the Arts, and Ideas: Patterns and Predictions in Twentieth-Century Culture'', second edition. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-52143-5
*[[José Ortega y Gasset|Ortega y Gasset, José]]. 1932. ''The Revolt of the Masses''. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-31095-7 [http://www.4literature.net/Jose_Ortega_y_Gasset/Revolt_of_the_Masses/ Online edition]
*Sullivan, Henry W. 1995. ''The Beatles with Lacan: Rock ‘n’ Roll as Requiem for the Modern Age''. Sociocriticism: Literature, Society and History Series 4. New York: Lang. ISBN 0-8204-2183-9.
*Varga, Bálint András, and Rossana Dalmonte. 1985. ''Luciano Berio: Two Interviews'', translated and edited by David Osmond-Smith. London: Boyars. ISBN 07145282930714528293
*Wellmer, Albrecht. 1991. ''The Persistence of Modernity: Essays on Aesthetics, Ethics and Postmodernism'', trans. David Midgley. Cambridge [Massachusetts]: MIT Press. ISBN 0262231603
[[Category:20th century classical music]]
[[Category:Contemporary classical music]]
[[eo:Postmoderna muziko]]
[[it:Musica postmoderna]]
[[pl:Postmodernizm (muzyka)]]
[[uk:Постмодернізм у музиці]]