The point is that I wouldn't "suggest" and "alternative" term at all, simply because I cannot align myself to the particular musicological persuasion that requires such pigeon-holing and categorisation of composers and their work to the point at which one might almost feel tempted to assume that composers aren't even worthy of the written attention of such people unless they either fall - or can be pushed - into some comfortable category or other (comfortable for the purposes of the musicloogist's convenience, that is), to sit there abit like "the soldier's body on the barbed wire" (as van Dieren wrote in a quite different context). Let's face it - which composer ever sets out to be a "modernist", "post-modernist", "pre-modernist" or whatever else you like, over and above the motivation to compose the music that he/she feels impelled to created at any given moment? The cap, however it may be styled and designed, just doesn't fit, to my mind.

"It means whatever I want it to mean", said the king. Sorry! Let's leave Lewis Carroll on one side and return to being serious. You'kll have to be partially responsible for determining its "real" "meaning", however, since my remarks on this were direct responses to - and solely prompted by - your observation
"Beethoven had many roots in the past as well, but that doesn't in my mind alter the fact that his work represented a major shift as well".
All I can add to clarify my meaning here is that these "shifts" were down to the way his mind worked - and the manner in and extent to which that itself changed between the early piano sonatas and the last quartets was an immense "shift" in its own right, but one propelled only from within Beethoven's own creative imagination rather than as a response to "shifts" outside of his development as a composer.

Best,

Alistair

Interesting to see that AG pursued post-modernism in his Montiverdi-flavoured projects-also interesting that he
was constrained to use student forces, but he seems to have enjoyed the spur this was to resourcefulness.
I wonder, RT, if Schnittke had a period of teaching, and whether it caused him to develop in a particular way?
One of the things I notice brushing with contemporary academe is the amount of teaching done by phd students
etc, ie that the age/ experience gap is perhaps lessening. This is one for the University thread perhaps, but is it
a factor? I need hardly add that the experienced voices here who work in academe are a different thing altogether.

Just to clarify my earlier point about Brahms, the 'Beethovenian mantle' was a specific reference to  Brahms 1,
not ignoring the baroque inflections etc in his other scores.

excuse my intrusion in  the fascination of this thread but i see some similar issues that plaague my own field , psychology.

wittgenstein is a serious challenge to any psychologist who wishes to make meaningful statements about human behaviour. the word 'intelligence' e.g., because we can infer that behaviour in a context is 'intelligent' and that such behaviour is of variable occurence depending on the person and/or circumstance, we are mortally tempted to propose 'INTELLIGENCE' as the cause of the variability. this is a huge and ongoing debate and not at all simple. MEMORY has undergone a similar slip, just because we can recall/reconstruct etc does not neccesssarily imply that there is a MEMORY and indeed it has proved really difficult to find and is now not seen as a useful construct. in both cases the 'animist' world view (see Pepper World Hypotheses) creeps in - because the sign is in use it's referent exists and is causative.

POSTMODERNISM is used to describe buildings, a stance a zeitgeist, a casuative force in artistic endeavour. has use of the word confused us as to the existence of a 'geist'. it has clearly become a field of academic and critical endeavour, a potent sign in use that confers an otherwise yet to be demonstrated authority, but certainly an affiliation to a group seeking or holding real power over assignments/access/ etc. (see Randall Collins The Sociology of Philosophies). but is it real, in the sense of a casuative cultural force? (cynically, yes if we think it is?)

i can think of no more emphatic assertion of subjectivity than Cage - is he not saying 'listen to this, it is unheralded, unprecedented!'? however dressed he claims uniquness does he not? or is he just taking the piss? in either case i can not see how he can make the assertion without announcing the subjective as integral to his act. if he is denying this he is trapped, it is not possible to say look at/listen to this without subjectivity.

as to sequences/ages/critical periods; i am a sceptic of all of them. too many have been proposed and melted away, we still barely understand, let alone appreciate the age of the univers/planet/life/mammals/primates/humanity/foraging/settlement/cities. how many estimates of epochal cycles, dialectics of history, life stages have melted under the weight of evidence and scholarship. it is just not that simple.

if postmodernism as an attitude does one thing, it lights our attention on the crisis of 'authority' in our answers to what is permitted, a variation of "how we shall live". is there a crisis of authority in music that is fragmenting the domain into meaninglessness from which random (allegedly) or ironically cryptic assemblages are the best that can be hoped for?

pardon the intrusion if it is a case of grandma and her breakfast, but the topic is wider than music.

No one has yet mentioned what is in fact the most obvious point about "post-modern music", and that is that it is much easier to write than the styles which preceded it. Little knowledge of harmony, counterpoint, or serial techniques is needed. In many cases the "post-modern" consists of a pot-pourri or medley of other composers' work. In many other cases it consists of mere mindless narcotic repetition of a simple phrase. This sort of thing is so easy that it becomes an insult to the listener.

Because it is so easy to write, the "post-modern" is the favoured style of a great many incompetent or unscrupulous rascals humbugs charlatans etc. who like to call themselves "composers".

For much the same reason (no effort or application required) it is also the favoured style of a great many rascals and humbugs among musical listeners. "Pseuds corner" and all that, what!

Our American friends have another word for "post-modernism." It is "cop-out."

Not nearly enough yet IMHO and 'scholarship' is often where they tend to hang around for longest - too convenient by half to reify everything and hang on 'isms', 'icisms' and even the odd 'isticism'. Grandmas may find egg-sucking a doddle but not all academics have got the hang of it yet. Er, <light-hearted banter emoticom> but I do agree that calum da j's points are important ones in this context.
     

Indeed so, Mr S. It's one thing to identify certain processes as behaving isticismistically. It's the dubious move of reifying this into something called Isticismisticalism where we are in danger of dropping our spotted dick in the custard (IMHO of course).   

Yes that's true, it isn't actually important (or even possible, often) to check off the references in Finnissy's pieces.

Much thanks to you and Tim R-J for the suggestions; I'm going to grab a couple from the library this afternoon.

Let's try and get this thread back onto the topic of postmodernism. In the context of music, I first know of it being widely talked about in Germany in the early 1980s, following on from the wider debate that was initiated by Jurgen Habermas's lecture on the subject ('Modernity - An Incomplete Project', which can be found in Hal Foster (ed) - Postmodern Culture). Hermann Danuser gives a relatively loose definition in the 1984 edition of his Die Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts. Amongst the composers Danuser identifies as postmodernist are a range of those from America, from John Cage through to minimalists, the generation of German composers that came to prominence in the 1970s and were seen to represent a break, Wolfgang Rihm, Manfred Trojahn and Hans-Jürgen von Bose, as well as others including Berio, B.A. Zimmermann, Ladislav Kupkovič, and later work of George Rochberg and Penderecki (all in the last chapter of the book, 'Moderne, Postmoderne, Neomoderne - ein Ausblick'). The attributes that Danuser identified with a shift had to do with the return of tonal elements, a relaxing of the negationist attitude to tradition (which he associated with Lachenmann, N.A. Huber and Spahlinger - nothing as strong as this exists much outside of Germany, though), and a shift away from highly individualistic forms of subjectivity towards other models, particularly those drawing upon non-Western cultures. Danuser modified his position in later writings, together with his canon, coming to remove some of the later names in particular. There have been other German commentators since then, but the debate has not really moved on that much - Ulrich Dibelius, in his standard history of modern music, mentions the term only in passing. But the term was taken up more actively in Anglo-American criticism and musicology from the late 1980s onwards; it is bandied about all the time (both to do with particular music and an approach to listening and understanding), but rarely defined in any coherent manner. One of the few attempts I've read to outline a taxonomy of essential attributes of postmodernist music is by Jonathan Kramer, who describes it as follows:

Postmodern music:

(1) is not simply a repudiation of modernism or its continuation, but has aspects of both a break and an extension;
(2) is, on some level and in some way, ironic;
(3) does not respect boundaries between sonorities and procedures of the past and of the present;
(4) challenges barriers between “high” and “low” styles;
(5) shows disdain for the often unquestioned value of structural unity;
(6) questions the mutual exclusivity of elitist and populist values;
(7) avoids totalising forms (e.g., does not want entire pieces to be tonal or serial or cast in a prescribed formal mold);
(8 ) considers music not as autonomous but as relevant to cultural, social, and political contexts;
(9) includes quotations of or references to music of many traditions and cultures;
(10) considers technology not only as a way to preserve and transmit music but also as deeply implicated in the production and essence of music;
(11) embraces contradictions;
(12) distrusts binary oppositions;
(13) includes fragmentations and discontinuities;
(14) encompasses pluralism and eclecticism;
(15) presents multiple meanings and multiple temporalities;
(16) locates meaning and even structure in listeners, more than in scores, performances, or composers.

(Jonathan D. Kramer – ‘The Nature and Origins of Musical Postmodernism’, in Judy Lochhead and Joseph Auner (eds) – Postmodern Music/Postmodern Thought, pp. 16-17).

Kramer wisely follows this immediately by pointing out that ‘Not many pieces exhibit all these traits, and thus it is futile to label a work as exclusively postmodern’ as well as that he ‘would find it difficult to locate a work that exhibits none of these traits’ (p. 17). Earlier on, he identifies another aspect which he uses to differentiate modernist and postmodernist uses of quotation and reference, which relates directly to the matters we have been discussing:

Modernist composers often want to take over, to own, to demonstrate their mastery of that which they are quoting, either by placing it in modernist contexts or by distorting it. Postmodernists are more content to let the music they refer to or quote simply be what it is, offered with neither distortion nor musical commentary. (p. 15)

Kramer's definitions remain very problematic to me (in particular, points 6, 8, 10 and 16 seem more about intention and interpretation than about works, and for that reason might be discarded), but I haven't seen anyone else do better yet. Any thoughts?