Theoretically Speaking S5:E15: What Makes Postmodernism, Postmodernism ?

The Wikipedia page for Postmodern philosophy says this:

Sounds like a barrel of laughs, right?

But that’s the philosophy side of Postmodernism. And philosophers are a dour bunch. You won’t see Jean-François Lyotard pranking Noam Chomsky with a joy buzzer, nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

The musical genre we call Postmodernism is a little different from the philosophy of the same name.

Musicians can be sticks-in-the-mud, too, but their mud tends to be wetter and more fun to splash around in.

Composers can look at Postmodernism in two ways:

• It can be a rejection of Modernism and everything that came before it,
• Or it can be a license to joyfully create without so many gosh darn rules to follow.

The first is a negative attitude, the second is positive. It’s glass half-empty vs. pour me another.

So Postmodernism isn’t, technically, a genre. It’s a mindset.

As we talked about last week, Modernism was the rejection of Romanticism, and that resulted in classical (or “art” or “serious…” or whatever you want to call it) music splitting into multiple subgenres. We can see that fragmentation as the invention of new styles, but towards the end of the 20th Century, composers took to doing their own thing without aligning themselves with any particular school of thought.

Each composer is his/her own genre. However, they do share some thinking.

They mix and match ideas willy-nilly. Few, if any, Postmodernist pieces are tonal or atonal all the way through because keeping things the same throughout is a rule, and Postmodernists don’t like rules.

On that note, they see Modernism’s failures but use its ideas.

Expect touches of Impressionism or Primitivism, or the twelve-tone technique. Quoting phrases from earlier works is a plus, whether the quote is from a Modernist piece, or Classical, or Pop, or some obscure melody from a completely different culture. Postmodernists embrace all music, whether it’s highbrow artistry or lowbrow schlock. From the silly to the sublime, it’s all good.

And most of it is all meant ironically. Everything – including the piece itself – invites derision and shouldn’t be taken seriously. It’s hard to tell what Postmodern music is genuine and which is winking knowingly.

Have you ever been at a party and tried to listen to two conversations at once? That’s sort of what happens in Elliott Carter’s “String Quartet No. 3.” It’s essentially two different pieces of music, one divided into six sections played by violin and viola, the other into four sections played by violin and cello.

Some composers took a mathematical approach. Allen Schoenberg updated his twelve-tone technique with Serialism, which takes a set of notes or phrases, and reuses them through simple repetition, or playing them backwards or upside down. 

Alternatively, a numeric pattern of intervals can be devised and used to determine the next note in the piece. This pattern can also be flipped upside down or backwards. It’s all very geometric and intellectual.

Arvo Pärt is a composer from Estonia who started out as a Neoclassicist and then began using Serialism. Though the Soviet regime eyed his early output with suspicion, because they viewed the avant garde as degenerate, it was his 1968 religious choral piece “Credo” that led to all his works being banned.

At that same time, Pärt also found himself, creatively, out of ideas. Despondent, he didn’t write any music for eight years, other than a few film scores he did for the income. He spent that time studying choral music from the Renaissance. A deeply religious man, he converted from Lutheranism to Eastern Orthodoxy during this period.

He also invented tintinnabuli: a technique that pairs a melody note with the next higher or lower note in the underlying chord’s triad.

The regime still thought his stuff was subversive, but they had other things to worry about, like their war in Afghanistan and Solidarność in Poland, and in 1980 gave him permission to move his family to Vienna. He later moved to Berlin and then back to Estonia, long after the fall of the Soviets.

Pärt’s style has been called “holy minimalism.”

If Postmodernism has any subgenres, minimalism is its most used. It’s simple, repetitive, and meditative. There’s so little in it that it amounts to sensory deprivation. It forces you back into your own head, into a trance, to think your thoughts without distraction.

Another minimalist, John Cage, wrote many pieces for prepared piano.

To prepare a piano, preheat the oven to 425°. Just kidding. There are actually many ways to prepare a piano.

In Cage’s “Sonatas And Interludes,” the piano has screws, bolts, rubber, plastic, and other objects stuck between its strings.

One of Cage’s other techniques was “Aleatoric Indeterminism,” which is a fancy way of saying “chance.” Most music fans have at least heard of his “4:33,” which is a piece lasting four minutes and thirty-three seconds without any musician playing any notes. What the audience hears is purely random.

This doesn’t really fit the definition of Aleatoric Indeterminism, because it’s sound rather than music. For real Aleatoric Indeterminism, we need to go to Cage’s “Music Of Changes,” which he wrote using the I Ching to pick the notes and their duration.

Or: Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “Klavierstück XI.” 

And then there’s the curious case of Danger Music and its best known composer, Dick Higgins.

As such, some Fluxus music is written so that it’s impossible to be performed.

The score for “Danger Music Number Seventeen,” one of the few pieces that can actually be performed, says “Scream ! Scream ! Scream ! Scream ! Scream ! Scream !” He was asked to perform it at a party, did so, and was then asked to leave. I can’t recommend it, but it’s on YouTube if you’re curious.

With every composer going off in different directions, it’s hard to sum up Postmodernism or to say where it’s going from here.

There are very serious composers, like Schoenberg, Pärt, and Philip Glass, but then there are class clowns like Higgins. 

We’ve always thought art separates us from animals.

What comes after Postmodernism?

Well, there’s already a philosophy called, I kid you not, Post-postmodernism. Where Postmodernism said Modernism failed, Post-postmodernism says Postmodernism failed, too, and that insightful people will come together to eradicate irony’s importance in contemporary culture.

That’s called Post-irony. 

Postmodernism does little to expand its audience. That’s part of its philosophy, that art is for the artists and audiences aren’t important.

I get it.

This is just, like, my opinion, man:

But we have to do better.

We need to start thinking again.

We have to create something genuine without irony, and with love, empathy, consideration, and heart.

I like Postmodern music and recommend the Suggested Listening list below. But c’mon, composers. Don’t use scales if you don’t want to but, literally for goodness’ sake, stop showing each other how clever you all are and create something uplifting.

• The world needs it.

• You need it. 

What now?

Suggested Listening – Full YouTube Playlist

Enjoy these selected Articles in Bill’s “What Makes…” series:

Theoretically Speaking S3 | E5: What Makes Disco, Disco? – part 1

Theoretically Speaking S2 | E6: What Makes Gospel, Gospel ?

And more…

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