Alastair Williams

Round Table: Modernism and its Others

MODERNISM remains a preoccupation of musicological study. Its persistence as a topic or issue on a certain level is probably banal: the twentieth century is currently one of the most highly populated fields of research, as is evident from conference programmes and publication catalogues. In almost any area one considers within that time frame, the legacy of modernist thought and practices can be found – a perhaps inevitable consequence of it being the century during which the discipline of musicology came of age. Resistance to modernism’s dominance over historiographical and methodological frameworks has come in the form of expanded definitions, and studies of music outside its canon. Modernism has been pluralized and contextualized, its aesthetic, geographical and technological boundaries surmounted and squashed. Yet it has not gone away. Instead, modernism remains the phenomenon against which other musical subjects frequently are measured, but its influence is not always acknowledged. The purpose of this round table is thus to consider modernism’s significance for the study of music today. The contributors’ brief was to produce short, provocative statements; they are not intended to talk directly to one another, and we have tried to keep overlaps to a minimum. The range of perspectives is deliberately broad, to represent various areas of interest and different scholarly approaches. Gianmario Borio is concerned with the aesthetic implications of both modernism and postmodernism, while Peter Franklin argues that modernism can fruitfully be understood as a late bloom of Romanticism. Christopher Chowrimootoo considers the relationship between modernism and middlebrow culture of the 1930s; Alastair Williams modernism in relationship to cold war politics. Arman Schwartz advocates taking on board elements of sound studies, not least its attention to noise and performance; Christopher Ballantine calls for a greater flexibility in order to embrace popular and non-Western music. Our hope is that readers will take the round table as starting points for discussion in seminars or through the student blog on the Royal Musical Association website, <http://www.rma.ac.uk/students>.

Voices of the Other: Wolfgang Rihm's Music Drama Die Eroberung von Mexico

This article explores the theme of self and other in Wolfgang Rihms music drama Die Eroberung von Mexico. After examining how the vocal distinctions between Montezuma and Cortez serve to dramatize the mutual cultural incomprehension of these two characters, it considers how each of them becomes mentally deranged. Finally, it traces how each figure subsequently searches for a means of communication in the last act. By analysing Rihms understanding of music as a medium, and by deploying the critical resources offered by Tzvetan Todorov, Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida, this article argues that Die Eroberung makes a significant contribution to understanding the mechanisms by which identities are enacted.

Music in Germany since 1968

Preface 1. Contexts and institutions 2. Expanded horizons: established composers after 1968 3. The refusal of habit: Helmut Lachenmann 4. Music and signs: Wolfgang Rihm 5. Contemporaries of Lachenmann and Rihm: the younger generation Epilogue.

Cage and postmodernism

Postmodernism is best understood as an ensemble of discourses that is not only internally diverse but also contradictory in its relationship to modernism. For postmodernism is both a rejection of modernism, because it jettisons the modernist fascination with system and form, and a transformation, in the sense that it reveals aspects of modernism that were previously undervalued. Given that the range of influences which contributed to the career of John Cage is as tangled as the diverse currents that feed postmodernism, it is not difficult to find parallels between Cages aesthetics and the postmodernist ethos. Add to this Cages apparent appetite for unresolved paradoxes, and it is tempting to argue that this is the sense in which Cage is most consistently postmodernist. However, not all Cages contradictions are postmodernist contradictions. Indeed the difficulties presented by trying to decide whether Cage is modernist or postmodernist, demonstrate just how hard it is to draw a rigid line between the two mindsets. Before considering further the affinities between Cage and postmodernism, it is necessary to map some of the salient features of postmodernism, while noting that Cages activities are not only described by this category but also contribute to its formation. The postmodern response to the rationalizing processes of modernity falls into two main strands. One offers an intensification of modernity, drawing on the energy of post-industrial new technologies and comfortably inhabiting the increasingly manufactured worlds we have created. The other strand counters the incursions of technocratic systems on nature and communities and is characterized by, for example, the ecology movement and new-age beliefs. Of course, there are many shades and variations of opinion between these hyper-modern and anti-modern extremes.

Mixing with Mozart: Aesthetics and Tradition in Helmut Lachenmann's Accanto

Accanto (1975–6), for clarinettist and orchestra, constitutes a turn towards historical reflection in the work of the distinguished German composer Helmut Lachenmann, providing a meeting point for the practitioner and the theorist. This article examines how Accanto s dialogue with Mozarts Clarinet Concerto relates to topics such as recording conventions, performance practices, and compositional trends, particularly in the 1970s. It also demonstrates how Lachenmanns conception of musical material is rooted in an understanding of the Western art music tradition, especially with regard to the issue of the ‘language-character’ of music. In doing so, it investigates Lachenmanns aesthetics of beauty in connection with performance practices, sociological models of musical subjectivity, and Adornos understanding of tradition. In general, the article argues that compositional practice in Accanto is shaped in response to the situation of classical music, especially in the 1970s.

Genres and Theatres: Wolfgang Rihm’s Opera-Fantasy Dionysos

Wolfgang Rihm’s Dionysos: Szenen und Dithyramben—eine Opernphantasie received its world premiere in 2010. Based on Nietzsche’s poetry collection Dithyrambs of Dionysus, the libretto combines elements of Nietzsche’s biography with mythology relating to Dionysus, the god of wine and revelry, who was so pivotal to the philosopher’s thinking. The opera also mixes historical allusions, to Wagner, for example, with reworked pre-existing music by Rihm. Dionysos extends beyond traditional operatic drama by the deployment of a number of genres and processes, including ritual theatre, symphonic transformation, expressionism, the Lied, the chorale and the aria. In doing so, the opera articulates the dual strands of individual feeling and collective emotion that have been such defining features of modernism.