# The Impact of Postmodernism upon Classical Music



## bravenewworld (Jan 24, 2016)

I'm curious as to whether or not postmodernism has had a major impact upon classical music - and if so, what?


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Cage et al. 4'33"


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

I think of Schnittke as the prototypical postmodernist in classical music
https://www.theguardian.com/music/t...fred-schnittke-contemporary-music-tom-service


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Schnittke is more a variety of modernism than postmodernism; and a modernism that incorporates a lot of tradition (much like Shostakovich, though in a different way). Schnittke is a polystylist.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I'd say postmodernism is sort of the air everyone's been breathing since the mid-20th century, so it doesn't make sense to talk about it influencing or not influencing anything in particular. The composers most insulated from postmodernism are probably the academic serialists, like Wuorinen. Beyond that, it's inescapable, including music that's not overtly postmodern at all. E.g., Arvo Part's music could never have come about outside of a postmodern context.


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## bravenewworld (Jan 24, 2016)

I was always inclined to think that Regietheater too could be linked directly to Postmodernism- the idea that there is no 'objective' interpretation of art and so directors should be free to stage operas as they see fit. Is this a fair analysis?


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## Guest (Sep 20, 2018)

bravenewworld said:


> I was always inclined to think that Regietheater too could be linked directly to Postmodernism- the idea that there is no 'objective' interpretation of art and so directors should be free to stage operas as they see fit. Is this a fair analysis?


I don't think so. There are many traditions and styles of staging opera, and Regietheater is usually very particular about the treatment of themes as drawn from the libretto and the score, or even ideas that the composer and librettist were interested in. There are parameters in which the interpretations operate and certainly a mixture of objectivity and subjectivity in how the interpretation actually translates to the stage.

I don't believe postmodernism is a good enough term to accurately describe music. It just doesn't have a consistent enough definition. Either everything composed today, from pastiche to experimental, is postmodern _or_ there are simple better terms we can use to describe composers' styles. Polystylism for Schnittke is one of them. Rejection or embrace of various traditions to various degrees happens across all composition today. You can call it 'postmodern' if you want, but from a purely chronological view that Debussy and Schoenberg up until early Boulez and early Stockhausen were 'modernists,' but I don't find it a particularly useful term for the stylistic pluralism we get today.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I feel postmodern describes listening to music outside of actual notes, as in something implied without actually stated, like Cage's 4'33" (again), and Berio's Sinfonia. According to this Sinfonia is "generally recognised as the ultimate postmodern musical work in its simultaneous extension and rejection of modernist aesthetics". Minimalism is also generally seen as a branch of "postmodernism", which I suspect also involves some perception more than the actual simplicity of the music like Einstein on the Beach.

https://sondermag.wordpress.com/2015/04/30/fragmentary-composition-jack-sheen/


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

shirime said:


> I don't believe postmodernism is a good enough term to accurately describe music. It just doesn't have a consistent enough definition. Either everything composed today, from pastiche to experimental, is postmodern _or_ there are simple better terms we can use to describe composers' styles. Polystylism for Schnittke is one of them. Rejection or embrace of various traditions to various degrees happens across all composition today. You can call it 'postmodern' if you want, but from a purely chronological view that Debussy and Schoenberg up until early Boulez and early Stockhausen were 'modernists,' but I don't find it a particularly useful term for the stylistic pluralism we get today.


I agree that "Postmodern" isn't a very useful term to describe music; it may not tell us anything about the music as experienced. But that may be exactly the point.

"Postmodernism" acknowledged that a certain semi-coherent artistic philosophy - Modernism - was played out as an effort to focus the culture, and further implied that cultural aspirations themselves, annihilated by Modernism's deconstruction of traditional artistic standards, had been replaced (permanently?) by an attitude of "anything goes" - anything, that is, which can be understood as making no claims to ultimate value and general validity.

The quintessentially Postmodern attitude of detachment can be communicated through "distancing" devices such as self-conscious references to various styles, and bringing unrelated or incongruous elements into proximity while carefully avoiding any suggestion of allegiance to the principles which originally motivated their creation. Since the 1960s we've seen a proliferation of minor "isms" but no overarching sense of, or claims made for, "where music is going." In this sense Postmodernism is merely a final stage in the Modernist process of breaking everything down, in which the pieces may be turned this way and that and reassembled in more or less novel ways but refuse to congeal into artistic statements of consequence.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

brave new world said:


> I'm curious as to whether or not postmodernism has had a major impact upon classical music - and if so, what?


I'd definitely say so. There would probably be no Górecki _Third Symphony_ without it, which no longer followed the fashion of the 12-tone or serial works that had had a stranglehold on what some composers felt they were supposed to write in order to be considered modern or relevant. "During the 1970s, Górecki began to distance himself from the serialism and extreme dissonance of his earlier work, and his _Third Symphony_, like the preceding choral pieces _Euntes ibant et flebant_ (Op. 32, 1972) and_ Amen_ (Op. 35, 1975), starkly rejects such techniques." Górecki freed himself from having to write according to any particular theory of composition. Music was freed, and it's been freer ever since because I believe there was a backlash against the cerebral side of the modern approach that may have been associated with the 2nd Vienesse School and those influenced by it; it had run its course to a certain extent... The Minimalists were also on the rise and that was certainly post-modernism. I would consider Brian Eno's "Music for Airports" as definitely post-modern, and I would say that we are still in the post-modern age where diversity of styles is a plus. How refreshing! The irony is that we're in such an age of diversity and yet few composers seem to have been able to take full advantage of it. Well, maybe tomorrow. I think the main requirement of post-modernism is not that it's necessarily innovative but that it's genuine, authentic, and _real_.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

We often hear about 
Berio´s _Sinfonia_ (1968 + later version https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinfonia_(Berio)) 
and 
Schnittke´s _1st Symphony_ (1969-74 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._1_(Schnittke) 
as main examples of orchestral collage or polystylist technique.

There is however also Rochberg´s _Music for the Magic Theatre (_1965 https://www.allmusic.com/composition/music-for-the-magic-theater-mc0002415850).


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_I'm curious as to whether or not postmodernism has had a major impact upon classical music - and if so, what? _

Yes-- but only if you include film scoring as classical music. Listen to the opening sequence of 1971's* Planet Of The Apes*, the alleged "jazz" score from *The French Connection *of the same year, and *Alien* from 1979, especially the complete score that was released this century that Wikipedia calls avant-garde. You'll find postmodernism had a powerful influence on film music in the last part of the 20th century though I don't see the same influence being apparent today.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Wikipedia has assembled a couple of incomplete lists of recent classical composers that have been associated with post-modernism, many of them still around:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_music
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_postmodernist_composers

There are many more; Silvestrov for example isn´t there.


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