Postmodern Music, Postmodern Listening

by Jonathan D. Kramer, Robert Carl (Editor)

Kramer was one of the most visionary musical thinkers of the second half of the 20th century. In his The Time of Music, he approached the idea of the many different ways that time itself is articulated musically. This book has become influential among composers, theorists, and aestheticians. Now, in his almost completed text written before his untimely death in 2004, he examines the concept of postmodernism in music. Kramer created a series of markers by which we can identify postmodern works. He suggests that the postmodern project actually creates a radically different relationship between the composer and listener. Written with wit, precision, and at times playfully subverting traditional tropes to make a very serious point about this difference, Postmodern Music, Postmodern Listening leads us to a strongly grounded intellectual basis for stylistic description and an intuitive sensibility of what postmodernism in music entails. Postmodern Music, Postmodern Listening is an examination of how musical postmodernism is not just a style or movement, but a fundamental shift in the relationship between composer and listener. The result is a multifaceted and provocative look at a critical turning point in music history, one whose implications we are only just beginning to understand.

Genres: Music

401 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 11, 2016

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of interesting ideas, but also lots of weasel words.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Composer and musicologist Jonathan Kramer died before he could finish his book on Postmodernism in music. This is a shame, but his student Robert Carl has edited his notes into a volume that conveys the essence of his ideas, even if it may not be the volume Kramer himself would have finished. Kramer's basic position is that we live in a postmodern present, which we cannot turn off when we listen to music from the early 20th century that varies from the "modernist" agenda of stylistic progress. As a result, many works that modernists might have considered flawed or "tainted" because they mix stylistic elements (such as tonal and atonal elements, or high art with pop) can in fact be heard as examples of postmodern sensibility. I have felt this way for a couple of decades now, so this volume feels empowering to me. I especially liked Kramer analyses of the Mahler Seventh and the Nielsen Sixth symphonies, for how they evidence postmodern qualities. In the year of the Bernstein centennial, we may find ourselves inclined to reexamine his work not as "flawed" examples of modernism, but prescient instances of postmodern music. This one's a keeper.