# Postmodernism...when?



## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

I recently got the complete symphonies of Penderecki in the mail. Today I've listened to no. 1 & 2 and they are quite different. 1st is from 1973 and 2nd from 1979. I feel those symphonies represent the difference between modern & postmodern. Wikipedia lists that postmodernism is from 1975. Do any of you have an opinion on this and maybe know of a similar change in style by a composer?


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Did you get the Dux box conducted by the composer, or the Naxos recordings? I don't know about labels, but those subsequent symphonies strike me as rather bland compared to No.1 But I haven't heard Pendercki's interpretations beyond the first. I have several on Naxos.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

I got the one with the composer conducting and maybe "bland" is the right word for postmodernism contra modernism...


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

I just posted about this the other day, but that seems to have disappeared, so I'll try to recreate:

1975 seems to me a good approximate start date. In politics, that's when socialism recedes and identity politics ascends - America gets its first neoliberal president in Jimmy Carter in 1976, and also the first president to make a big deal out of his religion since the 19th century; Iran's revolution of 1978-1979 ends with the Islamists in control. In philosophy, Foucault's _Discipline and Punish_ is published in 1975. In popular music, George Starostin has identified the Ramones' self titled debut of 1976 as the first important Postmodernist album. In classical music, Kyle Gann has identified William Duckworth's 1978 _Time Curve Preludes_ as the first "Post-minimalist" work (I don't know if he'd equate the division he identities between Minimalism and Post-minimalism with the division between Modernism and Postmodernism, but I would). And I've seen a case made for regarding spectral music and Helmut Lachenmann's instrumental musique concrète as Postmodernist - roughly summarizing, the composer tries to derive the composition from whatever material he happens to start with, as opposed to identifying universally valid principles and organizing the material according to those - and it seems to me that, from the same point of view, so is the New Simplicity of Wolfgang Schweinitz et al.

I haven't heard either of those symphonies by Pendrecki. I'll consider listening and, if I get that far, consider the difference between them.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Difficult to pin one exact year of course, but I would say no earlier than the sixties that's for sure.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

The dividing line was April 17, 1975 at 3:44 p.m. GMT.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

Of course, just a week after I turned 5...


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