Full Description
This title was first published in 2001. The last century has witnessed the ascendancy of the avant-garde in music. From Schoenberg to Boulez to Stockhausen, the avant-garde has defined the modern conception of musical creativity. Contemporary serious music demands the "new" in terms of style, form and ways of listening and hearing. Implicit in this approach is the rejection of the "old", from the baroque to the music of the later 19th-century symphonists. Paradoxically, however, it is this "old" repertoire which contiues to dominate concert programmes. An exploration of this dichotomy lies at the heart of this book. Drawing on a wealth of European philosophical and musical texts, the author examines the origins of the avant-garde and its relation to modernity in tandem with the history of the tonal tradition.
Contents
Part 1: The Culture of Classicism. 1. The Classical Understanding of Tonality. 2. Harmony, Order and the Good. 3. Tonality and the Metaphysics of Temporal Order. 4. Narrative, Temporality and the Aesthetic of the Work. Part 2: The Culture of Modernism. 5. Music and the Nature of Modernism. 6. The New Music and the Influence of Technology. 7. Order and the Occult in the Twelve-Tone Method. 8. The Origins of Modernist Aesthetics.
