Postmodernism and After

[James]

One of the most striking - and confusing - aspects of contemporary classical music is the bewildering range of styles employed by today's composers, from the quasi-medieval simplicity of Arvo Part's Fratres to the computer assisted complexities of Kaija Saariaho's Nymphea (to name just two examples). The roots of this diversity extend back to the 1960s, the decade in which the modernist tradition which had begun with Schoenberg's early atonal works and culminated in the serial experiments of the Darmstadt School lost its pre-eminent position: composers finally tired of its proscriptive laws, and many grew bored with the angst-ridden music which it tended to produce, even in the hands of it's finest exponents.

One of the first and most notable breaks with modernism came with the advent of minimalism, whose various practitioners - Riley and Reich in the US, Andriessen in Holland, Part & Gorecki in Eastern Europe - all rejected serialism's anarchic complexity in favour of simpler and more consonant styles. Other composers soon followed suit by returning to previously outlawed types of material. In England & Germany, musicians such as Maw, Holloway and Rihm began to look back to late-Romantic music for their inspiration, while Alfred Schnittke in Russia developed  his notion of "polystylism", with its free mingling of musics past and present. Subsequently, younger composers like the post-minimalist Michael Torke and the eclectic Mark-Anthony Turnage have continued to open up the previously tightly-guarded frontiers of classical music to a host of new influences, not only from the classical past but also the worlds of pop, jazz and world music.

This collective turn towards a more inclusive and less dogmatic aesthetic - often described as postmodernism - is much more than a simple act of artistic nostalgia or escapism. For many composers, the failure of serialism to provide a coherent universal language was proof that Western musical tradition had reached an impasse, and that the only way was back, or at least sideways - a fact acknowledged even by modernist giants such as Berio & Ligeti, whose later music has been enriched by influences ranging from Mahler symphonies to the music of Central Africa. Not that the modernist tradition is absolutely dead: younger composers such as Magnus Lindberg and George Benjamin continue to pave distinctly innovative paths. But for the time being, the promised land of totally new music - perhaps using the potentially limitless resources of computer-generated sound - remains some way over the horizon. Meanwhile, one of postmodernism's most positive byproducts has been the way in which contemporary classical music has increasingly re-entered the musical mainstream, with the works of audience-pleasers like Gorecki and Tavener achieving mass popularity never enjoyed by their more challenging predecessors - though whether this signals true artistic health, or simply the increasing commodification of Western art music, remains to be seen.

[jochanaan]

It's an interesting question, whether the "decrease of modernism's influence" is because its composers saw it as a dead end.  However, modernism was never the monolithic force that some adherents have claimed for it.  (Disclaimer: Anyone who has read many of my posts here knows I'm no anti-modernist! )  Sergei Rachmaninoff continued to write unabashedly Romantic music well into the 1940s, and Howard Hanson continued the tradition through most of the century.  Igor Stravinsky, after the modernist Rite of Spring, turned to the early Classical-period composers for models.  George Gershwin brought classical form to the jazz idiom and has become accepted as a "classical composer" without a trace of modernism.  Even during the heady days of the 1950s and '60s, modernists like Babbitt, Boulez and Varèse were balanced by Aaron Copland, Alan Hovhaness, Leonard Bernstein, Francis Poulenc and many others writing in unabashedly tonal or modal styles.

So the "bewildering range of styles" has characterized the entire 20th century, not just the last few decades.

[jochanaan]

True but not the point, title or topic of this particular article ... which also ties into the sequence of others I posted.

Oh, I think it's entirely on point.  Your opening paragraph seems to assume that all composers between the 20th century's beginning and the 1960s were modernists; I merely pointed out that this was not so.

[drogulus]

      I don't think modernism was ever broken with. It has always meant different things to different composers. The "vanguard of the proletariat" should not be understood at their own estimate just because they say so. Only a few composers follow that kind of leader principle, and perhaps you might conclude they were broken with. I don't though, since I never accepted the idea that they were leaders of anything beyond the boundaries of the cult. This would hold for any school that desires to place itself at the center of events, not just a particular group of ultras.

     There was no preeminent position to lose. When you give up the delusion that you are Napoleon you have not lost the leadership of France.

[Chaszz]

It's an interesting question, whether the "decrease of modernism's influence" is because its composers saw it as a dead end.  However, modernism was never the monolithic force that some adherents have claimed for it.  (Disclaimer: Anyone who has read many of my posts here knows I'm no anti-modernist! )  Sergei Rachmaninoff continued to write unabashedly Romantic music well into the 1940s, and Howard Hanson continued the tradition through most of the century.  Igor Stravinsky, after the modernist Rite of Spring, turned to the early Classical-period composers for models.  George Gershwin brought classical form to the jazz idiom and has become accepted as a "classical composer" without a trace of modernism.  Even during the heady days of the 1950s and '60s, modernists like Babbitt, Boulez and Varèse were balanced by Aaron Copland, Alan Hovhaness, Leonard Bernstein, Francis Poulenc and many others writing in unabashedly tonal or modal styles.

So the "bewildering range of styles" has characterized the entire 20th century, not just the last few decades.

(Parenthetically Strauss should be included here as a great, very late romantic composer, working into the 1940s.)

Modernism never held total sway in any the arts, which all had important representatives of a more traditional nature. But it was always largely a push-pull, either FOR modernism or more-or-less AGAINST it. The difference in post-modernism is that it's much more a multiplicity of styles than a dichotomy of for-or-against. It's like a jungle of intentions blooming all at once with no clear direction anywhere, no dominant trend, no real zeitgeist except perhaps eclecticism. And of course that arrogant buffoon the bourgeoisie is still the target -- THAT never changes and might be called the single unifying thread through most all the modern and post-modern arts. To vilify compacent flatulent affluence is de rigeur, unless of course it is the hand that feeds the artist, in which case it is kissed and not bitten. (Of course if it is masochistic, it may still be bitten.)

[drogulus]

It's an interesting question, whether the "decrease of modernism's influence" is because its composers saw it as a dead end.  However, modernism was never the monolithic force that some adherents have claimed for it.  (Disclaimer: Anyone who has read many of my posts here knows I'm no anti-modernist! )  Sergei Rachmaninoff continued to write unabashedly Romantic music well into the 1940s, and Howard Hanson continued the tradition through most of the century.  Igor Stravinsky, after the modernist Rite of Spring, turned to the early Classical-period composers for models.  George Gershwin brought classical form to the jazz idiom and has become accepted as a "classical composer" without a trace of modernism.  Even during the heady days of the 1950s and '60s, modernists like Babbitt, Boulez and Varèse were balanced by Aaron Copland, Alan Hovhaness, Leonard Bernstein, Francis Poulenc and many others writing in unabashedly tonal or modal styles.

So the "bewildering range of styles" has characterized the entire 20th century, not just the last few decades.

       I agree with all of what you say here. I would only add that if there is a decrease of influence it is the influence of a set of ideas about the primacy of a certain kind of modernism. It is revolutionary exclusivism, the conviction that the vanguard and only they are on the correct path.

      The Revolution consists in the destruction of its opposite. - Antoine St. Juste

      That has gone, while modernism shorn of revolutionary hubris remains.

      I haven't been able to find the exact quote above. Another version has "the destruction of all who oppose it".