Contemporary Music: Theoretical and Philosophical Perspectives

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 Irène Deliège, the book offers a wide range of international perspectives from prominent musicologists, philosophers and composers, including Célestin Deliège, Pascal Decroupet, Richard Toop, Rudolf Frisius, Alastair Williams, Herman Sabbe, François Nicolas, Marc Jimenez, Anne Boissière, 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.

CONTENIDO:

List of Music Examples
List of Figures and Tables
Contributors

Preface, Irène Deliège and Max Paddison

Introducction: Contemporary Music: Theory, Aesrhetics, Critical Theory, Max Paddison

Part 1: Theorical perspectives and retrospectives
1. The principles of music and the rationalizaton of theory, by Hugues Dufourt
2. Atonal Harmony: From set to scale, by Célestin Deliège
3. In search of lost harmony, by Rudolf Frisius
4. Against a theory of musical (New) Complexity, by Richard Toop
5. Heterogeneity: Or, on the choice of being omnivorous, by Pascal Decroupet
6. Varèse, Serialism and the Acoustic Metaphor, by Pascal Decroupet
7. "I Open and Close? by Richard Toop
8. A Period of Confrontation: The Post-Webern Years, by Célestin Deliège

Part II. Philosophical critiques and speculations after Adorno
9. A Philosophy of Totality, bt Herman Sabbe
10. Possibilites for a work-immanent contemporary musical logic, François Nicolas
11. Postmodernism and the survival of the Avant-garde, by Max Paddison
12. Material Constraints: Adorno, Benjamin, Arendt, by Anne Boissière
13. Towards and Aesthetics of Risk, by Marc Jimenez
14. Music and Social Relations: Towards a Theory of Mediation, by Max Paddison

Part III: Creative orientations
15. Music, Ambiguity, Buddhism: A composer's perspective, by Jonathan Harvey
16. Artistic Orientations, Aestetic Concepts, and the Limits of Explanation: An Interview with Pierre Boulez, by David Walters
17. Failed Time, Successful Time, Shadowtime: An interview with Brian Ferneyhough, by Lois Fitch and John Hails
18. Sound Structures, Transformations, and Broken Magic: An Interview with Helmut Lachenmann, by Abigail Heathcote
19. Hunting and Forms: And Interview with Wolfgang Rihm, by Richard McGregor
Postlude: Helmut Lachemann, Wolfgang Rihm and the Austro-German Tradition, by Alastair Williams

Index of names
Index of Subjects