Independent: So What Exactly Do We Mean by 'Modern Music'?
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Twentieth-Century Music
http://www.andante.com/article/article.cfm?id=24691
By David Gutman
The Independent [London] - 3 November 2004
The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music
Edited by Nicholas Cook and Anthony Pople
Cambridge University Press (£100)
'The Cambridge History of 20th-Century Music', edited by Nicholas Cook
and Anthony Pople (Cambridge University Press). Quietly, we may be
crossing some kind of Rubicon. Previous histories of 20th-century
music have taken it for granted that this means "contemporary
classical", with the emphasis on modernism. Then, in 1995, Oxford
republished Paul Griffiths's classic study under the title Modern
Music and After. It was clear something had changed. But when Simon
Rattle called his Channel 4 series Leaving Home, those departures were
seen as enrichments rather than a retreat from a hegemonic tradition.
Now this Cambridge History has arrived, with a keen sense of its own
importance as "the first appraisal" of 20th-century musical
developments "from the vantage point of the 21st". Its pluralist
narrative finds room for pop, jazz and easy listening alongside
classical mainstreams and avant-garde orthodoxies. The
non-interventionist stance makes for lively debate between
contributors, reflecting the revisionist brand of musicology where the
importance of any musical culture must be constantly contested. It's a
brave undertaking, since any publication that places Furtwängler next
to Peter Gabriel risks charges of incoherence or worse.
The substance of earlier inquiries is present and correct, except for
Bartók, here "reduced to a series of cameo parts", as the editors
admit. David Osmond-Smith's account of the beginnings of modernism is
taken up by Richard Toop as 1950s rationalism gives way to the 1960s
uncertainty. Finally, Alastair Williams brilliantly dissects the
problems caused by the ageing of a music based on constant change.
The moderate wing is represented by Arnold Whittall's authoritative
chapter on Britten and Shostakovich. Robert Fink finds the heirs to
that tradition emerging from the post-minimalism of Adams, Glass and
Reich. His fashionable conclusion that the mainstream has now moved
into "ambient and electronic dance music" won't please everyone and,
as the timeline nears the present, it becomes easier to carp. Dai
Griffiths, faced with the impossible task of summarising 30 years of
popular music, all but ignores the impact of dance music.
The global perspective is encouraging: chapters on the interfaces
between Western music and others, and on Africa, remind us that the
study of music must broaden its horizons to remain legitimate. But
were the editors sufficiently aware of the risk of throwing out our
own cultural baby with the bathwater?
The rock-influenced US composer Christopher Rouse (not in the History)
put it this way: "I'm not going to talk about rock'n'roll any more. It
doesn't need my help. It's not that I no longer like that music, but I
feel the wagons have been circled, and I'm going to stick with my
high-falutin', elitist, dead white European male brethren and, if
necessary, go down fighting."
Nightingale
> So What Exactly Do We Mean by 'Modern Music'?
Interesting question. I also wonder about the category "New Music" - at
what point does a piece stop being called new? U of T is having a New
Music Festival this week, most of which I have missed because I have
been ill. (It's actually been a pretty scary time for me - I ended up
with an ear infection as well as losing my voice, and am almost
recovered, but my hearing is still not back to normal.) I'm going to
make it to tonight's concert, but I wonder at the choice of music: it's
"Music for 18 Musicians", which I am looking forward to hearing, but it
doesn't seem very new to me.
--
Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions
To all musicians, appear and inspire:
Translated Daughter, come down and startle
Composing mortals with immortal fire.
Peter T. Daniels
>
> So What Exactly Do We Mean by 'Modern Music'? The Cambridge History of
> Twentieth-Century Music
> http://www.andante.com/article/article.cfm?id=24691
> By David Gutman
>
> to Peter Gabriel risks charges of incoherence or worse.
What, in the index?
> The moderate wing is represented by Arnold Whittall's authoritative
> chapter on Britten and Shostakovich. Robert Fink finds the heirs to
> that tradition emerging from the post-minimalism of Adams, Glass and
> Reich.
How insulting.
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
Michael Haslam
>
> > The moderate wing is represented by Arnold Whittall's authoritative
> > chapter on Britten and Shostakovich. Robert Fink finds the heirs to
> > that tradition emerging from the post-minimalism of Adams, Glass and
> > Reich.
>
> How insulting.
To Britten and Reich.
--
MJHaslam MA, ARCO, LGSM
Peter T. Daniels
No, to Britten and Shostakovich.
Van Eyes
news:Pine.NEB.4.61.05...@panix2.panix.com
> So What Exactly Do We Mean by 'Modern Music'?
"We" have many ideas about.
Although Janacek sounds "Modern" to me, I think of that period beginning
after Mahler, and including all to the present. "New", for me, is
roughly the past 20 years.
Regards
--
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