Revisiting the Historiography of Postwar Avant-Garde Music

Know about the book -

Revisiting the Historiography of Postwar Avant-Garde Music is written by Anne-Sylvie Barthel-Calvet and published by Taylor & Francis. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 1351609254 (ISBN 10) and 9781351609258 (ISBN 13).

This collection of essays delves into the historiographical traditions that have dominated how the stories of European postwar avant-garde music are told, seeking to approach commonplaces of that history writing from new perspectives. The contributors revisit subjects as varied as the impact of long-playing records on the emergence of open works, Messiaen’s interest in non-European musical traditions, Xenakis’s turn to information theory, Kagel’s strategic invention of a new genre, Berio’s dependence on funding from American foundations, and the ways in which figures like Boulez, Stockhausen, Pousseur, and Nono constructed their musical ancestries. Leading experts in their respective fields, the volume’s authors have sought to rethink the historiography of European experimental music of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s in ways that resituate that small but influential milieu in broader historical and cultural contexts. In doing so, they suggest new directions and insights for students and specialists of twentieth-century music and music historiography.