Reconceiving Structure in Contemporary Music

by Judith Lochhead

This book studies recent music in the western classical tradition, offering a critique of current analytical/theoretical approaches and proposing alternatives. The critique addresses the present fringe status of recent music sometimes described as crossover, postmodern, post-classical, post-minimalist, etc. and demonstrates that existing descriptive languages and analytical approaches do not provide adequate tools to address this music in positive and productive terms. Existing tools and concepts were developed primarily in the mid-20th century in tandem with the high modernist compositional aesthetic, and they have changed little since then. The aesthetics of music composition, on the other hand, have been in constant transformation. Lochhead proposes new ways to conceive musical works, their structurings of musical experience and time, and the procedures and goals of analytic close reading. These tools define investigative procedures that engage the multiple perspectives of composers, performers, and listeners, and that generate conceptual modes unique to each work. In action, they rebuild a conceptual, methodological, and experiential place for recent music. These new approaches are demonstrated in analyses of four Kaija Saariaho’s Lonh (1996), Sofia Gubaidulina’s Second String Quartet (1987), Stacy Garrop’s String Quartet no.2, Demons and Angels (2004-05), and Anna Clyne’s "Choke" (2004). This book defies the prediction of classical music’s death, and will be of interest to scholars and musicians of classical music, and those interested in music theory, musicology, and aural culture.

Genres: Music

194 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2015

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Judith Lochhead is a musicologist known for her interest in modernist music of the late 20th century and beyond. In this book, she makes some general observations on how the structure of musical works can be described, and she then provides an analysis of four particular works: Kaija Saariaho’s Lonh, Sofia Gubaidulina’s String Quartet No. 2, Stacy Garrop’s String Quartet No. 2, and Anna Clyne’s Choke.

The analyses are frustrating in that, while they are very solid and will give readers a deepened appreciation of the pieces, they are preceded by pages of completely inane po-mo talk. It is obvious that the author, for the sake of academic street cred, is ticking off boxes that are expected of her, even if they have little to do with the music. Readers must wade through highfalutin’ talk of Deleuze, Heidegger, and Barthes, and only then does Lochhead finally turn to the actual meat of the analysis. To boot, Lochhead makes a sudden tangent to note that Sofia Gubaidulina is a woman composer and of half-Muslim ethnicity, and while this is well-known in the contemporary-music world, the way Lochhead mentions this just feels so dishonest, a brazen attempt to score points with reviewers.

[Mills College Library]

781 L812 2016