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261
II. Music in a Postmodern World
A. Postmodern: definition is elusive
1. breaking away from modernist stance that mass
media is incompatible with art
a. technology: recordings available, hi- fi’s, tele-
vi sions purchased, FM radio, MTV, YouTube
2. chance (aleatoric) music: stresses intuition,
change, and improvisation
3. elite and popu lar music: shrinking distinctions
4. film and video game scores rely on art music
conventions
5. impact of globalization of society; inspiration
from non- Western music
6. collage and quotation: popu lar and art music
7. multimedia and per for mance art: combines
visual, aural, spoken, and dramatic modes
B. Music as protest
1. “Red scare,” artists and scientists blacklisted,
1950s and 60s
a. Aaron Copland, Leonard Bern stein, Artie Shaw,
Langston Hughes, J. Robert Oppenheimer
2. protest songs:
a. 1960s civil rights movement: Bob Dylan
b. Vietnam War: 1969 Woodstock Festival, Jimi
Hendrix
c. 1980s punk rock and rap: protests against dis-
crimination, poverty, corruption, government
policies
d. famine in Africa: Michael Jackson
e. drug culture, sexual revolution
f. musical feminism: Joan Baez, Dixie Chicks
g. other social causes: protecting the environ-
ment, atrocities of war, po liti cal campaigns
C. New technologies:
1. refinement of recording, playback technologies
OUTLINE
I. The Postmodern Turn
A. Mid- twemtieth- century departures
1. search for new means of expression
2. increasing social turmoil: violent experimentation
3. popu lar ele ments introduced
4. combinative techniques emphasized
5. revival of traditional, classical ele ments
6. highbrow or lowbrow: equal potential for greatness
B. Art, film, lit er a ture
1. architecture, painting, sculpture:
a. neo- eclectic approach
b. abstract expressionism, 1950s and 60s
c. pop art: themes from modern urban life
d. other postmodern subcategories: new classicism,
minimalism, earthworks, installation art
e. pluralistic approach to gender, sexual orienta-
tion, ethnicity
f. collage or quotation from literary, musical, or
visual source
2. trends in film:
a. “new wave” movement, 1950s and 60s
b. homage to Italian spaghetti western, Kung Fu
movies
c. genre- bending
d. visual collage
3. novelists:
a. uidity of time
b. chaotic, fictional universe
c. authors explore their identity
d. mythic heroes
e. Gabriel García Márquez, Kurt Vonnegut,
Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Amy Tan,
J. K. Rowling
PRELUDE 7 Beyond Modernism?
pop art of Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, Warhol, and
Johns; the environmental art of Christo and Jeanne-
Claude. Ask the class some culminating questions about
these two artistic attitudes of the twentieth century. What
are the differences between modernist and postmodern-
ist modes of artistic expression? What defines their sense
of modernity?
2. Play for students an excerpt from Stockhausen’s Etude
(Konkrete Etüde), composed in 1952 and now regarded
as one of the seminal early works of musique concrète.
Introduce students to Stockhausen’s use of tape loops in
this piece. Engage students in a class discussion about
the use of electronics in music. What instruments are
being employed in this piece? Can music be composed
using electronic methods? How does this piece relate to
the larger concepts of modernism and postmodernism?
Next, fast- forward to 2005, the year that Todd Macho-
ver’s Jeux Deux was premiered by the Boston Pops
Orchestra (see “Encounter,” pp.390–91). Introduce this
piece and discuss with your students how Machover
has evolved the integration of technology with musical
composition and per for mance since the time of Stock-
hausen’s Etude.
ASSIGNMENT SUGGESTIONS
1. As the textbook mentions, an impor tant part of the post-
modern attitude is the ac cep tance of mass media (TV
commercials, billboard ads, chart- topping hits, etc.) as
compatible with the notion of art. Such a suggestion
would seem impossible within the modernist tradition.
In thinking about this paradigm shift between modern-
ist and postmodernist art, where does art fit in? In other
TEACHING CHALLENGES
While Prelude 7 emphasizes the importance of thinking of
postmodernism as an assortment of aesthetic and artistic
2. advent of electronic music
a. musique concrète, France: sounds by natu ral
source recorded and manipulated
b. electronische Musik, Germany: only elec-
tronically produced sounds
3. Moog synthesizer commercially available, 1960s
4. Yamaha DX7; adoption of (MIDI), 1983
5. digital sampling synthesizers more affordable,
mid-1980s
III. Performance Matters
A. Postmodern proliferation
1. increasing interconnection, per for mance options
2. recordings:
a. used for study and emulation
b. new bar of performing perfection
3. expanded possibilities for musical virtuosity
4. international exchanges: integration of instru-
ments and techniques
OVERVIEW
Students are introduced to the general characteristics of post-
modernism, broadly defined as a diverse collective of artis-
tic responses to the increasing social turmoil experienced
after World War II and the rapid development of new tech-
nologies and media.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. To understand postmodernism as an artistic attitude that
incorporates both highbrow and lowbrow forms of
expression on equal levels
LECTURE SUGGESTIONS
1. Review with your class the examples of modernist visual
art cited in the lecture suggestions for the Prelude to Part
Beyond Modernism? | 263
now changed the way you might understand future such
experiences?
I was faced with reconciling art with life in my travels to the
city of Venice in Italy. As a tourist, every structure I encoun-
tered— a building, a church, a bridge, a pathway, a canal—
the careful planning and effort of realizing and executing the
design of casual structures like roads, bridges, and houses,
objects whose design I might have taken for granted before
my experience in Venice. I now have a heightened awareness
of the creative and artistic energy that goes into creating qual-
SUPPLEMENTAL REPERTORY
SUPPLEMENTAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
YOUR TURN TO EXPLORE
A theme that threads the discussion of “postmodern” sensi-
bility in Prelude 7 is the meeting and exchange of unfamil-
