'New music' between search for identity and autopoiesis

Journal/Book: Theor Cult Soc. 1999; 16: 6 Bonhill Street, London EC2a 4Pu, England. Sage Publications Ltd. 127+.

Abstract: The so-called New Music in Europe after the Second World War was based on the idea of progress, similar to technological progress and related to it, and aimed at a complete rationalization of composing. The ideal of music as autopoiesis, which appeared in the 1950s, became inherent to this development. It supposed a kind of communication on music as a reified object, which opposed music making and listening as communication between partners. Separated from the life-world and conceived as a self-referential system, New Music should represent not only the logical achievement of the historical development of European music, but also the superiority of Western musical thought in the more developed countries (like the USA, France, West German) over the music cultures of the world. Therefore, the integral serialism, which should rule the musical composition, became a form of symbolic power within the musical field, in correspondence with similar forms of domination within the economic, political and technological fields. However, some European composers rejected this trend and tried to find an alternative to aestheticism by means of political engagement. For instance, the Italian composer Luigi None (1924-90) explores the dialectic between subject and object, technological development and critique of technology, avant-garde and critique of progress, globalization and anti-imperialistic resistance. In his strategy, in which Gramsci's and Waiter Benjamin's thought played an important role, aesthetics became inseparable from politics. His search for identity as a composer transforms the tragedy of listening into an allegory of human condition.

Note: Article de Carvalho MV, Univ Nova Lisboa, Ctr Aesthet & Sociol Mus, P-1200 Lisbon, PORTUGAL

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'New music' between search for identity and autopoiesis - Or, the 'tragedy of listening'