The postmodern in music
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James Wierzbicki
Abstract
“Postmodern” is an elusive concept that embraces a wide range of critical theories and attitudes. To borrow the assessment that the American poet Walt Whitman offered of himself, the concept is large and contains multitudes, various aspects of which often seem to be at odds with one another. Postmodern art likewise contains multitudes; indeed, it would seem that one of postmodern art's chief characteristics is the comfortable integration of apparently contradictory stimuli that, importantly, are sited less in the “work” itself than in the eye/ear/mind of the beholder. Grounded on the idea that postmodern music is defined not by composers but by listeners, this essay challenges musicological writing that since the early 1990s has sought both to illuminate an ideology of postmodernism and to identify elements of a postmodernist style. In particular, it counters the much-repeated statement that the first, and perhaps quintessential, example of musical postmodernism is the eclectic yet thoroughly linear and discursive 1972 Third String Quartet of the late American composer George Rochberg; the essay suggests that, if a prototype of the postmodern in music must be named, a better candidate would be Rochberg's palimpsest-like 1965 Music for the Magic Theater.
© 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Post-modernism, post-structuralism, post-semiotics? Sign theory at the fin de siècle
- Postmodernity as the unmasking of objectivity: Identifying the positive essence of postmodernity as a distinct new era in the history of philosophy
- Signs of the times: Mind, evolution, and the twilight of postmodernity
- Conformity and resistance as cultural process in postmodern globalizing times
- Tourism as a postmodern semiotic activity
- Socio-semiotics and the new mega spaces of tourism: Some comments on Las Vegas and Dubai
- Subjectivism, postmodernism, and social space
- The laboring birth of doors
- Self-referential postmodernity
- Semiotics of art, life, and thought: Three scenarios for (post)modernity
- Semiotic approaches to advertising texts and strategies: Narrative, passion, marketing
- Return of the referent: Italian cinema for the new millennium
- The postmodern in music
- Strauss's Capriccio and the terror of time
- Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: the strange destiny of a singing mystic. When music travels . . .
- Postmodern (applied) linguistics
- Bi-paradigmatic irony as a postmodern sign
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Post-modernism, post-structuralism, post-semiotics? Sign theory at the fin de siècle
- Postmodernity as the unmasking of objectivity: Identifying the positive essence of postmodernity as a distinct new era in the history of philosophy
- Signs of the times: Mind, evolution, and the twilight of postmodernity
- Conformity and resistance as cultural process in postmodern globalizing times
- Tourism as a postmodern semiotic activity
- Socio-semiotics and the new mega spaces of tourism: Some comments on Las Vegas and Dubai
- Subjectivism, postmodernism, and social space
- The laboring birth of doors
- Self-referential postmodernity
- Semiotics of art, life, and thought: Three scenarios for (post)modernity
- Semiotic approaches to advertising texts and strategies: Narrative, passion, marketing
- Return of the referent: Italian cinema for the new millennium
- The postmodern in music
- Strauss's Capriccio and the terror of time
- Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: the strange destiny of a singing mystic. When music travels . . .
- Postmodern (applied) linguistics
- Bi-paradigmatic irony as a postmodern sign
