this list is as good a description of the european free improvisation 'school' of 'jazz' 'performance' as i have come across!
it certainly has strong resonance with the output of orenette coleman, charles mingus, archie shepp and john coltrane as well. (the us 'new thing' initiators)

Well, he does explain, when he lists those points as possible characteristics of 'postmodern music', that what he means by 'postmodern music' isThis seems to suggest some of them might apply to new music, while others (or the same ones, at other times) might have more to do with old music understood from a new perspective. I think this usefully leads on to the question I've been meaning to raise since the start of this thread, viz.: Is postmodernism a type of music, or a way of looking at music? Is it a type of music, or a type of musicology?

Defining 'postmodern music' is only one approach. The only art-form where certain stylistic/aesthetic tendencies have been agreed upon by most people as being called 'postmodern' is architecture. Apart from that quite specific usage, I'd suggest that 'postmodernism' has more precise meanings as a philosophical/aesthetic term (though even there I'm a bit sceptical) than as the name for a type of music, or a new era of music.

For some people, as perfect wagnerite hinted near the start of the thread, the question of postmodernism is also an economic question, and in that case it is even more clearly about production and reception - i.e. the conditions under which 'culture' is produced and consumed - rather than simply a question about style. See Jameson's Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, inter alia. But for me, the most important philosophical work which uses the term 'postmodern' is Jean-François Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition, and I'm inclined to view any use of the term which doesn't acknowledge this source as unhelpfully generalised. What was a useful and meaningful concept used in specific if diverse ways by a relatively delimited number of thinkers in the early to mid-1980s has been diluted and is now used in contexts whose precise relation to such philosophical/conceptual background remains worryingly unexamined. Even more problematic is the use of the term to characterise the ideas of people (Derrida being an obvious example) who never used the term - which would already be a serious enough failure of scholarly principles in the use and acknowledgment of sources, and is made worse by the fact that Derrida was strongly opposed to most of the things 'postmodernism' is generally taken to refer to. (Deleuze and Guattari are victims of the same laxity: someone mentioned them above as examples of 'postmodernism', but such claims are rarely backed up by any direct quotation or reference to the work of such writers.)

Lyotard talks about the collapse of the 'grand narratives', or 'meta-narratives', that he sees as having sustained Western philosophy up until modernism. (The question of whether modernism is already a fragmentation of these narratives or whether it is their final showing is one of the interesting points at stake.) These 'meta-narratives' would be things like religion, nationalism, History (e.g. a view of history in terms of progress, moving gradually in one single direction) ... Lyotard's idea is that in postmodernism the single big view of progress disintegrates into lots of little stories which are not quite so connected to each other [you could think of it as: 'histories' rather than 'History']. (The idea of globalisation replacing the nation-state would also be seen by some people as a post-modern phenomenon.)
 
So when people talk about postmodernism in music, one of the things they're likely to mean is: approaches to writing music that no longer worry in the same way as modernism did about ideas like 'progress', 'history' (in the sense of responsibility to history), the distinction between 'high art' and 'low art/popular culture', etc. For example, the possibility of polystylism and the removal of the necessity to develop a single style could be seen as connected to all of these: if you don't believe in progress and in responsibility to history any more, you're more likely to start mixing styles and perhaps not to worry about keeping a 'high art' style separate from a 'popular' style ... On the other hand, that necessity to develop a single, unified style, far from being something that existed and has now been superseded/abolished, could be seen as a retroactive construction - which to me casts some doubt on whether there is anything new/different rather than just the way the past always looks and feels in relation to the present.
 
The relation of postmodernism to the modernism that supposedly preceded it partly depends how you define modernism: sometimes there will be some overlap, e.g. whether a work like Berio's Sinfonia should be considered 'modernist' in its fragmentation, or 'postmodern' in its free mixing of styles, use of quotation, etc. But on the whole 'postmodernism' as a tendency within contemporary classical music is usually used to mean: quotation/mixing of styles, return to or free 'dipping into' past styles, the willingness to adopt different 'voices' in different pieces by the same composer, etc. etc. etc. This is rather generalised, and could include any or all of the following composers (plus many more): Alfred Schnittke, Robin Holloway, David Del Tredici, John Adams, some Ligeti (from the Horn Trio onwards), John Tavener ... I suppose one could view the apparent existence of an umbrella concept for so many diverse composers as evidence of the relative meaninglessness of the term - or, contrariwise, that it's an immensely useful way of bringing together and understanding simultaneous but apparently highly diverse phenomena [though would that itself go against the notion of pluralism? can plurality be a defining/unifying characteristic?!].
 
As a way of thinking about music, 'postmodernism' again seems to denote the breakdown of 'big stories' and single approaches. I quite like Lawrence Kramer's book Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge, though it's a long time since I read it (and I know Ian's not a fan!), but the approach also overlaps with other elements in what used to be called 'the New Musicology', therefore other examples would be books by Susan McClary, Gary Tomlinson, Robert Walser and others. As in the composer examples that I gave above, some of these 'New Musicologists' have been mainly interested in the breakdown of the 'high/low culture' distinction and have written extensively about popular music, while some of them have still focused mainly on 'classical' music but have taken new angles on it, often focusing more strongly on sociological and political issues rather than abstract analytical issues. One of the interesting things to note is that very few of them have written about contemporary classical music - they tend to write about either 20th popular music or about classical music from the 19th century and before, which they might say is because concepts around postmodernism have rendered contemporary 'high-art' music irrelevant, whereas I'd say that a simplistic interpretation of postmodernism has allowed them to duck the question of whether or not it's relevant.

Sorry to but in here chaps & chicks, ahem but King kennytone has been directed to this discussion by a link posted by another bored-ee||\a``\\¬|¬|`\
¬¬¬¬ * therefore I feel it is my DUTY to try & contribute (though I'll be damned if I'm gonna read all these goddam pages of worthy pontification & the like)...

Ahem yass, so, to, er address the, er, issue: Re: Is it meaningful or useful to talk of 'postmodernism' in music? erm well no, it is fairly meaningless to talk of <postmodernism> in music. Why? Well I dunno, I guess postmodernism has been & gone, babies. It is as much part of the nostalgia package as flock wallpaper, The Beatles, tetris & the Situationist International.

Forget postmodernisim.
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I am not personally fixing that at all; what I am doing is suggesting the possibility that some composers might become prey to such a notion. I wouldn't accept that perspective either, though not because I don't believe that it might exist for some people but simply because i find it unacceptable to me, just as you find it unacceptable to you.
No, I'm sure that most composers wouldn't do that - at least not consciously or deliberately - but in addition to the fact that, again, a few such might nevertheless become prey to it, my principal concern here is that all composers will be conscious to some degree of the fact that, whereas some of their audience will simply try to accept (or reject) their work for what it is and says, others will want to categorise it so that they can use it as illustrations of the categories about which they write. There is quite an industry in that kind of labelling, as we all know and, whilst at times it can be helpful to a point, it becomes unhelpful all too often when it is accorded an importance greater than it needs or deserves. It can also leave open disagreements of viewpoint in individual cases; some people, for example, regard Carter as a "modernist", yet to me he is simply a "Carterist" - which, to my mind, is precisely what he's supposed to be.

Best,

Alistair

I challenge you to show me any sort of writing about music which doesn't do that in some sense. Just to render music in terms of words (which we all do when we write about it, including here) is already to use it as illustrations of categories.


Well, do you think that, say, questions of influences from various older musical traditions on Carter's work are irrelevant? I would imagine not (but correct me if I'm wrong). And if not, why is not the question of Carter's relationship to (influenced by and maybe influencing) aspects of a modernist tradition equally a legitimate concern? And is all writing on music that attempts to discern broader tendencies of no value?

No, tetris it is, a very early type of computer game that ties in with King Kennytone's other examples of nostalgia.

Could you give some specific examples of this? And is the situation any different when musicologists identify, say, a rococo period between the Baroque and Classical eras?


Errr - I think that's a rather unfortunate analogy for anyone who posts many words on here or elsewhere to make


Yes, I'm aware of that, and completely and utterly disagree. I find that sort of categorisation, denying the possibility of distinct twentieth-century sensibilities, just as bad as those you criticise.


Who do you think the latter are?


I don't know who is doing that, just suggesting some measure of commonality of approach, aesthetics, sonic realisations amongst a wide range of very different composers.


If we talk of Haydn, Mozart and early Beethoven as part of a Classical Period, that doesn't imply any of those composers are less than independently-minded. The same is true of the ars subtilior. Why should it be any different with modernism (or subsets therein - like romanticism, it's an extremely wide category)?


No sort of historical writing is simply like that - history is not just about reflecting a reality but also constructing one (within limits). Historical musicology is the same. The attempt to appropriate Carter (helped by his 'grand old man' status) into a view of 'tradition' that attempts to exclude most of the more radical tendencies in the twentieth century (preferring a smooth, rupture-free view of music history viewed almost entirely independently of other social processes) tells me of little more than a neo-romantic aesthetic, which is nothing if not post-modern. Something tells me that if someone wrote a study locating Carter's music as a clear and smooth development of nineteenth century tendencies, and thus as some type of late romantic, you wouldn't have anything like the same problem as if one tries to consider his relationship to modernism.

Actually, the more Carter is appropriated and played in that anti-modernist manner, the more ephemeral I feel his work to be. It ends up sounding like just a tired, dusty range of late romantic clichés. I know there's more to it than that.