Experimental

Music Theater and Postmodernism

Experimental Music Theater

It is genre of music that started in around 1960’s, especially toward the end. A few
composers who were involved with the development of this genre include:

• György Ligeti (1923-2006): Aventures (1962), Nouvelles Aventures (1962-65)

• Mauricio Kagel (1931-2008): Ludwig Van (1969)
• Peter Maxwell Davies (1934-2016): Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969)
• Georges Aperghis (b.1945): Sept Crimes de l'Amour (1979), Les Guetteurs de Son
(1981)

Postmodernism

“By the 1980s this view of post-modernism, as an all-inclusive definition of a cultural

epoch typified by stylistic glut, by pluralism, parody and quotation, by the
disappearance of traditional cultural hierarchies and the randomization of cultural
production, had become the commonplace.”
- Malcolm Bradbury

“Postmodernism is less a surface style or historical period than an attitude.”
- Jonathan Kramer

• Comparison of Modernist and Post-Modernist Attitudes

Modernism
- Totalitarian
- Minimalistic
- Objective, ultimate truths or principles
- Emphasis on systematization
- Structural

Postmodernism
- Rejection of totality
- Drawing from all methods
- Critical and skeptical attitudes
- Subjective, favoring personal preferences
- Emphasis on differences and against unity
- Post-Structural, Deconstruction


• Techniques and Traits in Postmodernist Music
- Parodies/Quotations, References
- Mixing of styles (from different musical periods)
- Deconstruction
- Analysis through composition
- Return to tonality and simpler musical textures
- Influence of popular music and ethnic music traditions

• Some Musical Examples of Postmodernism
- Mauricio Kagel: Ludwig Van (1969)
- Peter-Maxwell Davies: Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969)
- Luciano Berio: Sinfonia (1968-69) (3rd Movement)
- Minimalistic composers such as Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass,
Michael Nyman…etc.