Contemporary Music: Theoretical And Philosophical Perspectiv

Description:
This collection of essays and interviews addresses important theoretical, philosophical and creative issues in Western art music at the end of the twentieth- and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries. Edited by Max Paddison and Ir?ne Deli?ge, the book offers a wide range of international perspectives from prominent musicologists, philosophers and composers, including Célestin Deli?ge, Pascal Decroupet, Richard Toop, Rudolf Frisius, Alastair Williams, Herman Sabbe, Fran?ois Nicolas, Marc Jimenez, Anne Boissi?re, Max Paddison, Hugues Dufourt, Jonathan Harvey, and new interviews with Pierre Boulez, Brian Ferneyhough, Helmut Lachenmann, and Wolfgang Rihm.

Part I is mainly theoretical in emphasis. Issues addressed include the historical rationalization of music and technology, new approaches to the theorization of atonal harmony in the wake of Spectralism, debates on the 'new complexity', the heterogeneity, pluralism and stylistic omnivorousness that characterizes music in our time, and the characterization of twentieth-century and contemporary music as a 'search for lost harmony'.

The orientation of Part II is mainly philosophical, examining concepts of totality and inclusivity in new music, raising questions as to what might be expected from an autonomous contemporary musical logic, and considering the problem of the survival of the avant-garde in the context of postmodernist relativism. As well as analytic philosophy and cognitive psychology, critical theory features prominently, with theories of social mediation in music, new perspectives on the concept of musical material in Adorno's late aesthetic theory, and a call for 'an aesthetics of risk' in contemporary art as a means 'to reassert the essential role of criticism, of judgment, and of evaluation as necessary conditions to bring about a real public debate on the art of today'.

Part III offers creative perspectives, with new essays and interviews from important contemporary composers who have made highly significant interventions in the debates around music today, both through their compositions and through their writings on music. The contributions from Pierre Boulez, Brian Ferneyhough, Helmut Lachenmann, Wolfgang Rihm, and Jonathan Harvey, and also the opening essay of the volume by the French spectralist composer and philosopher Hugues Dufourt, address issues of chance, control, freedom, intuition, ambiguity, technology, time, and meaning in contemporary music. A concluding essay by Alastair Williams on advanced contemporary music and the Austro-German tradition post-1968 provides a postlude to the book, while the whole collection is prefaced by an extended introductory chapter by Max Paddison which provides a context of ideas, and traces many of the issues discussed back to Adorno's seminal notion of une musique informelle.


Contents: Preface, Ir?ne Deli?ge and Max Paddison; Introduction: contemporary music: theory, aesthetics, critical theory, Max Paddison; Part I Theoretical Perspectives and Retrospectives: The principles of music and the rationalization of theory, Hugues Dufourt; Atonal harmony: from set to scale, Célestin Deli?ge; In search of lost harmony, Rudolf Frisius; Against a theory of musical (new) complexity, Richard Toop; Heterogeneity: or, on the choice of being omnivorous, Pascal Decroupet; Var?se, serialism and the acoustic metaphor, Pascal Decroupet; 'I open and close?', Richard Toop; A period of confrontation: the post-Webern years, Célestin Deli?ge. Part II Philosophical Critiques and Speculations after Adorno: A philosophy of totality, Herman Sabbe; Possibilities for a work-immanent contemporary musical logic, Fran?ois Nicolas; Postmodernism and the survival of the avant-garde, Max Paddison; Material constraints: Adorno, Benjamin, Arendt, Anne Boissi?re; Towards an aesthetics of risk, Marc Jimenez; Music and social relations: towards a theory of mediation, Max Paddison. Part III Creative Orientations: Music, ambiguity, Buddhism: a composer's perspective, Jonathan Harvey; Artistic orientations, aesthetic concepts, and the limits of explanation: an interview with Pierre Boulez, David Walters; Failed time, successful time, Shadowtime: an interview with Brian Ferneyhough, Lois Fitch and John Hails; Soundstructures, transformations and broken magic: an interview with Helmut Lachenmann, Abigail Heathcote; Hunting and forms: an interview with Wolfgang Rihm, Richard McGregor; Postlude: Helmut Lachenmann, Wolfgang Rihm and the Austro-German tradition, Alastair Williams; Indexes.


About the Editor: Max Paddison is Professor of Music Aesthetics, Department of Music, University of Durham, UK. He is the author of Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music and Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture.