Modernism vs Postmodernism
gravity
Cage is actually High Modernism. i mean random notes, aleatoric
composition, is similar to Pollack's Abstract Expressionism. then Glass and
Reich would be postmodern.
i'm a bit confused. i'm reminded of the Bible verse "nothing new under the
sun". perhaps there's a grain of truth in that. all these schools maybe
labeled as 20th Century art and music, in a few years. the modern and
postmodern labels might be reused.
Gravity
Jerry Kohl
You're right to be confused. The problem is that these terms are used
in different ways by different people. Properly speaking, "modernism"
is an attitude, not an art style, and (as an English term) originated
in the 17th or 18th century to characterize people who held that modern
authors--e.g., Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, etc.--were worthy of being
held up as models for students to emulate, in opposition to the view
that only Classical authors--e.g., Homer, Sophocles, Vergil,
etc.--should be taught in schools (and, of course, in the original
Greek and Latin).
You speak to the issue of what "modern" means when you refer to the
passing of time. In once sense, it refers to the present and immediate
past, and so is moveable. However, in different disciplines, different
starting points have been assigned to just how far back this "immediate
past" stretches. Political historians generally hold (ir used to, when
I was an undergraduate, at least) that the Modern era begins in 1415 or
thereabouts; when I took Art History, we were toled that it immediately
follows the Baroque, with the onset of Neoclassicism in the 1790s;
music historians, however, held that Modern Music began near the end of
the 19th century.
FWIW, here is a definition from an actual published book (so it must be
authoritative!), titled "Modern British Music", by Otto Karolyi (London
and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1994), p. 135: "Modern is a
general reference to the twentieth century. *Modernism* however, is
more specific in that it emphasises developments, especially in the
arts, between 1890 and 1930. The term postmodernism, now also in common
parlance, refers to the period after 1930."
This definition makes things very simple. Stravinsky's Petrushka is
modernismistical, whereas his Symphony in Three Movements is
postmodernismistical. Schoenberg's Transfigured Night is
modernismistical(ish), whereas the postmodernismisticalness of his
String Trio is guaranteed by the definition.
Of course, the term "postmodernism" is in origin a critical stance,
rather than an artistic one and, with the transference of this term to
an historical period, it becomes necessary to coin new terms to
describe both subsequent historical periods and the critics who either
advocate or critique from one or the other position. In architecture,
for example (where the term "postmodern" first gained wide currency),
the term "post-postmodernism" has been somewhat mischievously advanced
to describe a trend in the 1990s to reject the tenets of
postmodernismisticalness, so I suppose the corresponding critical
stance would have to be postpostmodernismisticalnessism. How grand this
sounds!
--
Jerry Kohl <jerom...@comcast.net>
"Légpárnás hajóm tele van angolnákkal."
gravity
undereducated women. it's nice to distance myself from the Philistine
masses. they can have their WWE, their fishing, and assorted other wastes
of time.
well postmodernism. yes it was a trend in the arts (architecture, fine
arts, music, literature). but it was also a trend in philosophy, mainly a
bunch of Nihilist leftists. postmodernism, with its pastiche and parody,
acts as if it's more for the common man. but in reality, postmodernism is
just as rarefied and academic as modernism was.
for what it's worth, we do have two stocked ponds, but i don't fish much.
and WWE sucks.
Gravity
gravity
has no plot and no character development. my Usenet handle was taken from
Gravity's Rainbow, hey i like the title ok, and hardons and rockets. i
guess you could say i was insprired by quantum gravity and postmodern
physics as well.
so postmodern physics, what is it? well it's after relativity and quantum
mechanics. at some point, people started doing calculations that have zero
connection to the real world. i mean, string theory, it predicts absolutely
nothing. sure it says there is a cosmological constant, but it's 55 times
the lower bound set by experiment.
i do like Joyce's Ulysses, it's clever, but i've never read the whole thing.
who has.
Gravity
gravity
stuff shortly after the Sokal hoax. it's basically gibberish, but many
scientists read it. by dropping terms from various sciences, they fooled
people, everyone said "well i don't understand it, but maybe it's out of my
field". physics has become so compartmentalized, so academic, that no one
can discern shit from shinola.
but string theory is postmodern. trust me on that. it will be see as a
gigantic waste of hard drive space, and perhaps a good mathematical
exercise.
Gravity
schofe...@yahoo.com
There is the machine modernism of the Futurists - the love of hard
metallic edges and clean lines - cool, unemotional, unelaborated,
neoclassical.
Then there's the primitive modernism - the return to the pagan
(Stravinsky's Rite of Spring), to the village music of eastern Europe
(Bartok), the return to the medieval (Webern), the return to the world
of the unconscious (in painting, the surrealists - in music, Satie and
Messiaen).
Then there's the modernism that's influenced by non-European
(non-Western) cultures (Hovhanness - Armenian, Cage - Japanese, Terry
Riley - Indian, etc) - like Van Gogh was touched by Japanese prints,
Gaugin by Polynesian culture, Picasso by African art...
For me the first postmodernist was Mahler - his playing with styles,
his irony. Now that's weird because that means that postmodernism comes
before modernism as well as after it. So that would give us
premodernistpostmodernism like Ives and Mahler and
postmodernistpostmodernism like Glass and Adams
I think I'll take a stress pill and lie down a while
Schoferhoffer
Ian Pace
<schofe...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1148248748.1...@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> Even within modernism there are different strands.
> There is the machine modernism of the Futurists - the love of hard
> metallic edges and clean lines - cool, unemotional, unelaborated,
> neoclassical.
>
> Then there's the primitive modernism - the return to the pagan
> (Stravinsky's Rite of Spring), to the village music of eastern Europe
> (Bartok), the return to the medieval (Webern), the return to the world
> of the unconscious (in painting, the surrealists - in music, Satie and
> Messiaen).
>
> Then there's the modernism that's influenced by non-European
> (non-Western) cultures (Hovhanness - Armenian, Cage - Japanese, Terry
> Riley - Indian, etc) - like Van Gogh was touched by Japanese prints,
> Gaugin by Polynesian culture, Picasso by African art...
>
modernist?
Ian
Jerry Kohl
LOL! Let's not forget the Seconda Prattica modernism of Monteverdi
which, I suppose, makes Marini and Legrenzi post-modern.
It helps no end that we are not making any serious attempt to define
what *in a piece of music* constitutes modernism in the first place.
You have begun here to define what you mean by "postmodern", however,
when you speak of Mahler's sense of irony and hint that he employed
stylistic ecclecticism. Unfortunately, this leads to the supposition
that prepostmodernism (i.e., modernism) must be marked by seriousness
and a unified style. Gregorian chant, perhaps?
gravity
later years. his works are viewed as some of the first modernism in
painting. a lot of Monet's later works, as he went blind, don't really have
much realist quality to them. they are smudges of color in some ways, and a
forerunner of later works by other artists.
so Tristham Shandy. it's viewed as postmodern by many, but written
centuries ago.
what is my point? perhaps there are other works of "postmodernism" in
literature that have just been lost over the years. it would be neat to see
*everything* from 1650, just to get an idea of what was actually read back
then. i truly feel there is nothing new under the sun, but obviously James
Joyce's experimentations with language, and the fine arts analog, could be
viewed as a break from traditional thought.
Gravity
Jerry Kohl
Hey! All you have to do is define what "modernism" is (as all the
postmodernists have done, each in their own way, and to their own
ends), and then you're laughing. Or not, as the case may be.
Ian Pace
"Jerry Kohl" <jerom...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:1148277844.5...@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
gravity wrote:
> one thing that bugs me. Goya seemed to go a bit blind and crazy in his
> later years. his works are viewed as some of the first modernism in
> painting. a lot of Monet's later works, as he went blind, don't really
> have
> much realist quality to them. they are smudges of color in some ways, and
> a
> forerunner of later works by other artists.
>
> so Tristham Shandy. it's viewed as postmodern by many, but written
> centuries ago.
>
> what is my point? perhaps there are other works of "postmodernism" in
> literature that have just been lost over the years. it would be neat to
> see
> *everything* from 1650, just to get an idea of what was actually read back
> then. i truly feel there is nothing new under the sun, but obviously
> James
> Joyce's experimentations with language, and the fine arts analog, could be
> viewed as a break from traditional thought.
JK: Hey! All you have to do is define what "modernism" is (as all the
postmodernists have done, each in their own way, and to their own
ends), and then you're laughing. Or not, as the case may be.
--
Some of Lyotard's words on postmodernism still have much to commend them,
specifically:
'Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one listens
to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald's food for lunch and local
cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and "retro" clothes in Hong
Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games. It is easy to find a public for
eclectic works. By becoming kitsch, art panders to the confusion which
reigns in the "taste" of the patrons. Artists, gallery owners, critics, and
public wallow together in the "anything goes," and the epoch is one of
slackening. But this realism of the "anything goes" is in fact that of
money; in the absence of aesthetic criteria, it remains possible and useful
to assess the value of works of art according to the profits they yield.
Such realism accommodates all tendencies, just as capital accommodates all
"needs", providing that the tendencies and needs have purchasing power. As
for taste, there is no need to be delicate when one speculates or entertains
oneself.'
Jean-François Lyotard - The Postmodern Condtion: A Report on Knowledge,
translated Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (University of Minnesota
Press: Minnesota, 1984 (original text, 1979)), p. 78
The first sentence of this is often quoted, but not the rest. Lyotard makes
clear that in the absence of other criteria of value, the marketplace
becomes the ultimate arbitrator. This, more than anything else, is what
postmodernism is about - the total domination of the marketplace over all
artistic activity. That is why Jameson's definition of postmodernism as 'the
cultural logic of late capitalism' is spot-on.
The global village was a modernist idea; in its place postmodernism
substitutes the global supermarket. Roland Barthes' Mythologies was once a
seemingly radical and counter-cultural text; nowadays I believe it appears
on the shelves of many an advertising executive. The individuals and
organisations of late capitalism find ways of appropriating for their own
ends much that they encounter. How to produce artistic and intellectual work
that can resist such appropriation is one of the major challenges today.
Ian
Ian Pace
"gravity" <gravity...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:447103fe$0$79787$892e...@authen.yellow.readfreenews.net...
past traditions. What is different is the degree of emphasis.
Ian
Ian Pace
> they are all good words to use at coffee shops to fool the pretentious and
> undereducated women.
Are you fond of T.S. Eliot, by any chance? :)
> it's nice to distance myself from the Philistine
> masses. they can have their WWE, their fishing, and assorted other wastes
> of time.
>
> well postmodernism. yes it was a trend in the arts (architecture, fine
> arts, music, literature). but it was also a trend in philosophy, mainly a
> bunch of Nihilist leftists. postmodernism, with its pastiche and parody,
> acts as if it's more for the common man. but in reality, postmodernism is
> just as rarefied and academic as modernism was.
Here I would agree with you - in fact postmodernism is *more* rarefied and
academic, in my opinion. It was a trend borne of nihilistic liberals, not
leftists, who refuse all values save for those of the marketplace.
Ian
Ian Pace
gravity wrote:
> i had always viewed Cage as postmodern, and Schoenberg as modern. perhaps
> Cage is actually High Modernism. i mean random notes, aleatoric
> composition, is similar to Pollack's Abstract Expressionism. then Glass
> and
> Reich would be postmodern.
>
> i'm a bit confused. i'm reminded of the Bible verse "nothing new under
> the
> sun". perhaps there's a grain of truth in that. all these schools maybe
> labeled as 20th Century art and music, in a few years. the modern and
> postmodern labels might be reused.
JK: You're right to be confused. The problem is that these terms are used
in different ways by different people. Properly speaking, "modernism"
is an attitude, not an art style, and (as an English term) originated
in the 17th or 18th century to characterize people who held that modern
authors--e.g., Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, etc.--were worthy of being
held up as models for students to emulate, in opposition to the view
that only Classical authors--e.g., Homer, Sophocles, Vergil,
etc.--should be taught in schools (and, of course, in the original
Greek and Latin).
JK: You speak to the issue of what "modern" means when you refer to the
passing of time. In once sense, it refers to the present and immediate
past, and so is moveable. However, in different disciplines, different
starting points have been assigned to just how far back this "immediate
past" stretches. Political historians generally hold (ir used to, when
I was an undergraduate, at least) that the Modern era begins in 1415 or
thereabouts; when I took Art History, we were toled that it immediately
follows the Baroque, with the onset of Neoclassicism in the 1790s;
music historians, however, held that Modern Music began near the end of
the 19th century.
JK: FWIW, here is a definition from an actual published book (so it must be
authoritative!), titled "Modern British Music", by Otto Karolyi (London
and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1994), p. 135: "Modern is a
general reference to the twentieth century. *Modernism* however, is
more specific in that it emphasises developments, especially in the
arts, between 1890 and 1930. The term postmodernism, now also in common
parlance, refers to the period after 1930."
JK: This definition makes things very simple. Stravinsky's Petrushka is
modernismistical, whereas his Symphony in Three Movements is
postmodernismistical. Schoenberg's Transfigured Night is
modernismistical(ish), whereas the postmodernismisticalness of his
String Trio is guaranteed by the definition.
JK: Of course, the term "postmodernism" is in origin a critical stance,
rather than an artistic one and, with the transference of this term to
an historical period, it becomes necessary to coin new terms to
describe both subsequent historical periods and the critics who either
advocate or critique from one or the other position. In architecture,
for example (where the term "postmodern" first gained wide currency),
the term "post-postmodernism" has been somewhat mischievously advanced
to describe a trend in the 1990s to reject the tenets of
postmodernismisticalness, so I suppose the corresponding critical
stance would have to be postpostmodernismisticalnessism. How grand this
sounds!
Whilst postmodernism can be related to earlier forms of neo-classicism,
eclecticism, etc., I don't really buy the argument that Stravinsky and
others should be counted as post-modernists. If we take postmodernism to
mean a withdrawal from all meta-narrativistic paradigms (other than that of
the marketplace), as defined by Lyotard, then neither Stravinsky's Symphony
in Three Movements or Schoenberg's String Trio fit the picture, in my
opinion (Stravinsky's Jeu de Cartes may be another matter). Stravinsky's
para-Bahktinian celebration of the eclecticism of the carnival does (pace
Adorno!) have a humanistic streak to it, in my opinion, whilst the Symphony
in Three Movements has, to my ears, a type of inexorable internal logic of
its own, rather than seeking simply to entertain and divert. Schoenberg's
String Trio constitutes an extension and refinement of his earlier
techniques, from his late-romantic, free atonal and early dodecaphonic
periods in combination, in a manner that continues to present some type of
relatively autonomous form of cultural possibility. All of these things fall
within a modernist umbrella, in my opinion. Modernism, as you say, is an
attitude that stems back centuries (in particular, I do not accept that
there is a fundamental break between early romanticism and modernism - if
anything, the latter involves a refocussing of the former); however, it
still makes sense in the context of music to delineate a movement from the
late 19th century onwards, in my opinion, because of a question of degree.
Musical modernism represented a high degree of artistic autonomy, not from
lived experience or the external world, but from externally imposed
use-value (commodification). In this sense the works of Bach, Beethoven,
Schumann and Brahms can all be considered modernistic to an extent, but not
quite to the degree of Schoenberg. Stravinsky developed his own type of
autonomy, which however could paradoxically result in disengagement that
itself renders the art-work more prone to commodification (as Adorno
identified). Schoenberg's autonomy was achieved by working outwards from
within tradition itself, rather than adopted as an affectation. But the
motivations of autonomy were both sufficiently developed as to make
combining them under the umbrella term of 'modernism' meaningful (and I
realise how problematic it is to use intention as a criteria here, but I
find it inescapable - other factors are so fluid with changing historical
and aesthetic circumstances).
The term postmodernism is problematic when used in the context of most
fields in part because it originated from architecture (it was used
occasionally beforehand, but not in such a way as to gain wide currency), as
a reaction against the modernist International Style. Defining 'modernism'
in architecture is rather easier to do than in other artistic and
intellectual fields, thus 'postmodernism' becomes a meaningful term. But
don't ever forget that the models that Robert Venturi held up as shining
counter-examples to modernism were those of Disneyland and Las Vegas. His
vision of market-driven novelty and eclecticism constituted an aggressive
propagation of the values of North American high capitalism in opposition to
European and other forms of cultural autonomy.
Ian
Ian Pace
>i had always viewed Cage as postmodern, and Schoenberg as modern. perhaps
> Cage is actually High Modernism. i mean random notes, aleatoric
> composition, is similar to Pollack's Abstract Expressionism. then Glass
> and
> Reich would be postmodern.
Cage was an idealist, with an abstract vision for art, which I count as part
of the project of High Modernism. Pollock's work was not random (nor was
Abstract Expressionism in general), but he was also an idealist. So were
Glass and Reich (and Riley and La Monte Young, though perhaps not Adams) in
their early days, before the market utility of that which eschews the
'ornamental' (thus rendering the artwork per se of a purely ornamental
status, as Adorno brilliantly pointed out) got the better of them. A work
like Reich's 'Different Trains', for all the supposed seriousness of purpose
(which I don't buy), corresponds in a hyper-cynical and crass manner to the
adherence to market utility, in my opinion. Reich appropriates the subject
of the Holocaust to produce a work of guilt-alleviating catharsis-inducing
distraction absolutely in accordance with the demands of capitalist society.
The work tells nothing, it enlightens not at all, it just makes audiences
feel better about themselves for having heard it (the same could be said in
large measure of Schindler's List (not absolutely, it does have its merits,
through conveying to a wider audience something of the reality of the
historical events, and especially about the relationship between Schindler
and Goeth, though the hideous and obscene conclusion rather swamps those
aspects)).
>
> i'm a bit confused. i'm reminded of the Bible verse "nothing new under
> the
> sun". perhaps there's a grain of truth in that. all these schools maybe
> labeled as 20th Century art and music, in a few years. the modern and
> postmodern labels might be reused.
>
The mistake is to conceive of modernism and postmodernism as styles rather
than as attitudes.
Ian
schofe...@yahoo.com
Where does Schoenberg fit into your picture - or would you not call him
a
modernist?
* * *
Well Schoenberg must be a modernist 'cos he was banned by the Third
Reich.
His type of modernism looks for rational structures - the logical
necessity of serial composition as a way of holding music together
after the expansion and disintegration of tonality. I guess what he
was looking for is to create rational structures to contain the
powerful emotions he felt and wanted to communicate.
Interestingly enough this was also Boulez's aim - to take delirium and
organise it (my paraphrase). Whether either Schoenberg or Boulez
succeeded is, I guess, up to the listener.
(For me Berg succeeds better than either of them at the big
expressionist stuff.)
Schoferhoffer
schofe...@yahoo.com
I agree with you about Different Trains. I heard it at a Kronos recital
where they also played an arrangement of Harry Partch's "US Highball"
which was much more life affirming - the Kronos abandoned their
detached postmodernist facial expressions and actually seemed to be
enjoying themselves!
Schoferhoffer
Ian Pace
<schofe...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1148315800.0...@g10g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> Ian asked:
>
> Where does Schoenberg fit into your picture - or would you not call him
> a
> modernist?
>
> * * *
>
> Well Schoenberg must be a modernist 'cos he was banned by the Third
> Reich.
Being Jewish was enough for that to happen.
>
> His type of modernism looks for rational structures - the logical
> necessity of serial composition as a way of holding music together
> after the expansion and disintegration of tonality. I guess what he
> was looking for is to create rational structures to contain the
> powerful emotions he felt and wanted to communicate.
Well, you could say that just about any composer throughout history has done
that to some extent.
>
> Interestingly enough this was also Boulez's aim - to take delirium and
> organise it (my paraphrase). Whether either Schoenberg or Boulez
> succeeded is, I guess, up to the listener.
>
> (For me Berg succeeds better than either of them at the big
> expressionist stuff.)
>
Berg is wonderful, but different - slightly different aims to Schoenberg (or
Webern, or Boulez for that matter).
Ian
Jerry Kohl
must be
> authoritative!), titled "Modern British Music", by Otto Karolyi (London
> and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1994), p. 135: "Modern is a
> general reference to the twentieth century. *Modernism* however, is
> more specific in that it emphasises developments, especially in the
> arts, between 1890 and 1930. The term postmodernism, now also in common
> parlance, refers to the period after 1930."
>
> JK: This definition makes things very simple. Stravinsky's Petrushka is
> modernismistical, whereas his Symphony in Three Movements is
> postmodernismistical. Schoenberg's Transfigured Night is
> modernismistical(ish), whereas the postmodernismisticalness of his
> String Trio is guaranteed by the definition.
>
> Whilst postmodernism can be related to earlier forms of neo-classicism,
> eclecticism, etc., I don't really buy the argument that Stravinsky and
> others should be counted as post-modernists. If we take postmodernism to
> mean a withdrawal from all meta-narrativistic paradigms (other than that of
> the marketplace), as defined by Lyotard, then neither Stravinsky's Symphony
> in Three Movements or Schoenberg's String Trio fit the picture, in my
> opinion
What, you mean there might be something wrong with Karolyi's
definition, or did I just pick bad examples? ;-)
--
Jerry Kohl
RyanT
why his music tends to be interpreted as being conservative. Probably
Webern was the one who paved the way into modernism.
Modernists were mostly interested in aspects of objectivity. Boulez
and Stockhausen began serializing every aspect of music, which lead to
notions of music being an objective product rather than a subjective
one. This puts Cage in the same camp as them, because he was
interested in removing the composer from the process of music itself.
They share the same high modernist snobbery, at least.
They've all managed to create something different through this process,
but I think that in the end people realized that you can't *really* be
completely objective. So back to subjectivity...
There's some overlap, though, because Reich and Glass used objective
processes which have some correlations with modernist ideals. The idea
that music exists as an object is in both idealisms, although seems
like most of them have abandoned that notion in their later works.
Ryan