This article is one of a series exploring the spatialization of sound sources in recorded songs and how they may be understood (see also ‘The Virtual Performance Space in Rock’, twentieth-century music 5/2). Its theoretical basis is multi-faceted, utilizing notions of ecological perception, of the sound-box, of the singer's persona, and of interpersonal distance in communication, as well as further concepts from cognitive science. It focuses particularly on image schemata and proxemics, exemplifying them across a range of genres, while also addressing them critically, for instance from a feminist perspective. Finally, it explores how this theoretical basis helps us not only to understand the contribution of spatialization to the interpretation of songs and their meanings, but also to shed light on the role of other musical domains.

Our fraught political moment is a propitious one for renewing the Marxist approach to music. Because that approach has consistently been folded into a more general Marxist discourse on art and aesthetics, any attempt must begin by revisiting what is essential to that discourse. I take its keystone to be the realist conception of art. This conception holds that artworks are a means by which at least some of their appreciators come to know truths about the world outside consciousness. Insofar as they are representational, painting, fiction, music, and drama potentially constitute vehicles for coming to understand the real world. Artistic representation on this view is understood to be analogous to mental representation.

Previous studies of Marxist aesthetics have followed Maurice Merleau-Ponty in making a sharp distinction between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ branches of the tradition. The Eastern, beleaguered by the exigencies of Communist Party rule is often presented as the corrupt twin of the Western. The latter, developed in relative freedom and informed by a Hegelian legacy suppressed by Stalinism, alone commands theoretical, rather than merely historical, interest. This article departs from this Cold War framework in arguing that the Hegelian strand in Marxist aesthetics grows out of its Bolshevik predecessor and, crucially, shares with it a realist conception of art. After reconstructing the emergence and development of this conception (paying special attention to how music is directly addressed in the literature), I evaluate the compatibility of the realist conception of art with the materialist conception of history as it is found in Marx and Engels. I ultimately argue that moving past the realist conception of art is key to renewing the Marxist approach to music for our time.

In 1957, soon after his emigration from Hungary, György Ligeti began an internship at the electronic music studio of Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in Cologne. The three electronic works Ligeti produced there constitute a small portion of his oeuvre, but it is commonly acknowledged that his experiences in the studio were crucial for his stylistic development. This article makes specific analytical connections between the techniques of elektronische Musik that Ligeti encountered at the WDR and his sound-mass techniques in acoustic composition. The discourses in circulation in the electronic studio of the 1950s – especially as articulated by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Karel Goeyvaerts, and Gottfried Michael Koenig – reveal a collective obsession with gaining compositional control over timbre. By internalizing and reusing mainstream elektronische Musik techniques such as additive synthesis, filtering, and Bewegungsfarbe in an acoustic form, Ligeti brought timbre forward as the central compositional problem in the acoustic work Atmosphères.

Socialist Realist ceremonial art has generally been viewed in the West as a form of high art, because of its air of monumentality and references to classics. Judged by high-art standards, such works are invariably failures, and Western commentators have accordingly treated Socialist Realism as something exotic or inexplicable. This approach is inadequate: firstly, because it does not examine Stalin-era art on its own terms, and secondly, because it refuses to acknowledge any similarities in Western culture.

Socialist Realism was a discipline placed upon artists to provide a suitably dignified backdrop to state ritual. In this sense, it was a species of religious art, in which blandness, anonymity and tedium were by no means vices. This article compares the relatively smooth passage of Myaskovsky into Socialist Realism with the troubled homecoming of Prokofiev, who only mastered the discipline just before the end of his life.

[PART 1] Contemporary musical production and consumption have become increasingly pluralist, seemingly bearing out postmodernist accounts of the eroding distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultures. Accordingly, accounts of twentieth-century music ought to be able to narrate these different musical spheres – emblematized by the phenomena of Elvis and Darmstadt – together. While such gestures are not altogether absent from some recent histories of twentieth-century music, the results suggest that a more developed theorization of cultural pluralism is needed, one that also has a political dimension. Liberalism is one polity that espouses cultural pluralism and value pluralism, ideas that are not entirely separable from postmodernist relativism. Both epistemes are limited, however, by a disinclination towards dialectical thought and by the absence of ideology critique. [PART 2] Theoretical concepts from Slavoj Žižek (influenced by Lacanian psychoanalysis, and Laclau and Mouffe’s ideas of radical democracy) hold the potential for a post-Marxian model of ideology critique that might galvanize approaches to musical pluralism. Such an application could be relevant to various kinds of music, without giving a priori preference to one musical style over another – as was the case with Adorno. That said, these ideas have significant resonances with Adorno’s negative dialectics, and are valuable in developing a form of strong relativism that could dialecticize a dialogical approach to musical pluralism. This suggests the possilbity of construing pluralism not as the achievement of stasis (or ‘the end of history’), but as a means of effecting social and historical movement beyond the present cultural paradigm.

Research into musical creativity has hitherto involved highly disparate approaches and has taken place largely at the level of the individual. As a result, creativity has tended to be interpreted in terms of either expressive behaviour(s) in performance or ineffable innovation. In the meantime, however, a tranche of interdisciplinary research has moved towards a more collaborative understanding of creativity. With reference to that research, this article analyses the performance of a jazz standard played at a jam session in London. In exploring this unplanned moment of collaborative creativity, the study looks at the relationship between the mundane shaping of an ending and its occurrence within a cultural tradition that demands inventiveness on the part of performers. From an examination of the different sets of cultural knowledge on which musicians draw and an analysis of the momentary interactive conduct of the performers we obtain a view of creativity as an emergent amalgam – a shifting blend of knowledge and conduct that works to bring a song to a close.

This article considers three science fiction films, released in 2013–14, featuring Scarlett Johansson: Her(dir. Spike Jonze), Lucy(dir. Luc Besson), and Under the Skin(dir. Jonathan Glazer). It suggests that to engage with the phenomenon of voice in imaginative and productive ways it is necessary to slide over a disciplinary divide and address more explicitly the musicality of speech. In my main example, Her, Johansson provides the voice of an operating system with which the film's protagonist falls in love. Central to their intimate connection is the establishment of what I call the ‘haptic voice’, which conveys a sense of physical proximity. A similar blurring of the boundaries between voice and body occur in the presentation of the alien characters Johansson plays in the other films.

What do we mean by ‘twentieth-century music’? And how are we to square this with the musics of a twenty-first century that is now nearing the end of its second decade? These and other questions are salient for a journal that identifies the former century in its title yet regards the latter as equally within its remit. Just how are we to think the two centuries together? Should we consider the music of the twenty-first century as a continuation of tendencies from the late twentieth? Or are there tendencies within musical production and consumption that have a definitively twenty-first-century character and so mark out the beginning of a new era? If so, when and with what, iconically speaking, did the twenty-first century begin and the twentieth end? Or do these historiographic categories even continue to have currency?

This article elaborates the art-theoretical concept of ‘the contemporary’ along with formal differences between contemporary music and contemporary art. Contemporary art emerges from the radical transformations of the historical avant-garde and neo-avant-garde that have led to post-conceptual art – a generic art beyond specific mediums that prioritizes discursive meaning and social process – while contemporary music struggles with its status as a non-conceptual art form that inherits its concept from aesthetic modernism and absolute music. The article also considers the category of sound art and discusses some of the ways it, too, is at odds with contemporary art's generic and post-conceptual condition. I argue that, despite their respective claims to contemporaneity, neither sound art nor contemporary music is contemporary in the historical sense of the term articulated in art theory. As an alternative to these categories, I propose ‘musical contemporary art’ to describe practices that depart in consequential ways from new/contemporary music and sound art.

Liminality seems to have become something of a buzzword. Typing ‘liminal OR liminality’ into Google™ produces one and a quarter million hits. That this should be so is not altogether surprising, for the liminal state has much in common with the postmodern age, as scholars as diverse as Homi Bhabha and Sharon Zukin have argued: the blurring and crossing of thresholds and boundaries; the breakdown of historically fixed categories; the exposure of ambiguities; the fluidity and hybridity of identities; play and absurdity; and uncertainty. Indeed, Bhabha has gone so far as to suggest that liminality is the hallmark of postmodernity, that the postmodern age is itself liminal, existing between a dead modernity and a future not yet known.

This article demonstrates how performance may further understanding of – and offer new perspectives on – indeterminate music, and in particular the ways in which performers realize the indeterminate aspects of the scores. Cage's Solo for Piano (1957–8), one of the most celebrated indeterminate scores, is used as the model for such an approach. The close involvement that performers have with the score and the music over what is often a prolonged period of time leads to a particular kind of understanding, different from that of non-performers, which, when articulated, can offer valuable insights. After a brief outline of the score, the article begins by discussing the performances of other pianists, notably David Tudor. It then examines in detail the author's own approach to making a realization, discussing the implications of such an approach from both practical and aesthetic perspectives.

This essay explores changes in Prokofiev's compositional style that occurred in the mid-1930s, around the time that he was making his decision to return to his homeland. In his diary Prokofiev wrote about a desire for a ‘new simplicity’, a style that featured simple melodies and comprehensible form. Compared to the avant-garde aspirations of his earlier works, his ‘new simplicity’ features a self-conscious return to Classical precedents. Prokofiev believed his new lyricism would be a uniquely modern yet accessible music for the Soviet people. Many of his most popular works, including Lieutenant Kijé (1933), Romeo and Juliet (1935–6), and Peter and the Wolf (1936), are written in the style associated with this ‘new simplicity’. The style is distinctive because of its sudden and markedly trangressive chromatic swerves to distant harmonic areas. By invoking and then thwarting tonal conventions, Prokofiev creates a compelling tension between Classicism and modernism. This essay presents the first movement of his Violin Concerto no. 2 (1935) as an exemplar of his ‘new simplicity’. The fractured musical surface is interpreted as a musical narrative, as an ironic satire of sonata form.

Björk’s collaboration with the director Lars von Trier on the film Dancer in the Dark was marked by well-publicized personal and aesthetic differences. Their work nevertheless shares an intense preoccupation with the nature and quality of sound. Björk’s soundtrack systematically explores the boundaries between music and noise, and the title of von Trier’s film itself presupposes a heightened attention to aural detail. This paper proposes a theoretical context for understanding Björk’s music in the light of her work with von Trier. Whereas Björk’s soundtrack responds to the visual and narrative stimuli of von Trier’s film, the use of sound in her album Vespertine thematicizes more familiar Björk subjects: the relationship between music, landscape and the natural world, and Björk’s own (constructed) sense of Nordic musical identity. By placing Vespertine alongside Björk’s music for Dancer in the Dark, the sense of ‘hyperreality’ that defines both also emerges as a primary characteristic of her work.

In contrast to established musicians, lesser-known composers have received scant attention in art music scholarship. This article, based on an ethnographic study, considers how a group of British composers construed ideas of success and prestige, which I analyse in terms of anthropological writings on exchange, Bourdieusian symbolic economies, and Foucauldian notions of disciplinary power. Prestige was ascribed to composers who created ‘interesting’ music, a category that eclipsed novelty as an aim. Individuality, enacted within a context of individualism, was key to assessing whether music was interesting. This individuality had to be tempered, structured, and embedded in the social norms of this and related ‘art worlds’. The article examines the social processes involved in creating this individuality, musical personality, and music considered interesting.

Often described as a social pathology, populism currently finds virulent expression in political movements across the world. Unlike the recognition that involves mutuality and respect, populism is typically founded on misrecognition; it pursues alterity, essentializes identity, offers ‘protection’ against the threat of hostile ‘others’. Often the social consequences are tragic. Music, however, can confirm or disrupt the way populism constructs identity. Epistemologically, genres can enable us to both understand and misunderstand our world: we can recognize ourselves (‘us’) in the genres that undergird the music we identify with, and (mis)recognize others (‘them’) in those we find alien. But genres can be undermined; they can be integrated, hybridized and directed towards more inclusive or cosmopolitan ends, thus destablilizing ontologies frozen around pre-fixed identities. I elaborate this theory, illustrating it with examples of focused genre-transgression, particularly in South African jazz, where progressive social tendencies have sought to create an integrated, cosmopolitan society.

This paper explores the relationship between music, time, and movement in those Western art music rituals within which orchestral performance occurs. It begins by reviewing some of the literature on the symphonic performance event itself, particularly the work of Christopher Small, who has written about this at length. It goes on to consider the nature of the conductor’s gestures within these events, and argues that these can be construed as a form of dancing, and that the functional ambiguity of these gestures serves only to enhance their symbolic significance; their greater importance, in fact, is in connection with the creation of another world of time. Finally, the paper compares the work and gestures of conductors with shamanistic practice in other cultures, both in terms of the conductor’s role within the concert hall and as a result of the images of them presented to us in various media.

The growing number of performances and recordings of Feldman’s music in recent years attests to increased interest among performers and listeners; yet his music remains an uncommon subject for detailed music analysis. Proceeding on the premise that this disparity is no accident, I argue that certain distinctive qualities of the music render it difficult to analyse with tools, methods, and practices developed in response to other repertories. This paper investigates the analytical challenges posed by Feldman’s music. A survey of such challenges as they relate to his output in general is followed by an account of two particular issues associated with his late work: scale and repetition. Two case studies address these issues in turn, advancing relevant conceptual and methodological approaches. In the first study, on Coptic Light for orchestra (1985), I suggest that analysts might reconsider part–whole relationships in music analysis, and use the idea of ‘populations’ (with their attendant features of range of variation and distribution) to develop a non-reductive (and non-constructive) approach to scale. In the second study, on Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello (1987), I encourage analysts to rethink the role of repetition in music analysis, such that repetition is no longer (only) a goal, but becomes a point of departure. Throughout the essay I take the view that analysis is an investigation of experience; that a particular difficulty of analysing Feldman’s music is the self-knowledge it requires; and that the concerted inquiry that is music analysis can well be used to expand – not only condense – the realm of musical experience.

Taking its theoretical orientation from Sherry Ortner's distinction between ‘power’ and ‘projects’, this article considers the relationship between local artistic projects and the cultures in which they participate. I focus on Pleasure Garden, a collaborative project that spans site-specific installations, concerts and an album. Exploring a wide range of issues at stake in the creative process, including collaboration, gender, aesthetics, colonialism, the work concept, and commodification, I trace how Pleasure Garden’s creators variously reproduced and reworked dominant conventions, while at the same time pursuing their own distinctive commitments. Through this, I argue that Pleasure Garden’s creators negotiated a space that was inside, yet sometimes out of alignment with what I call the ‘cultures of creativity’ associated with Western art music, the music industries, late capitalism, and neoliberalism. This highlights both the powerful forces affecting musicians today and the possibilities for making things otherwise.

This article, which is intended as a starting point for debate rather than a definitive statement, proposes an outline structure for a musicology of record production. While such a musicology cannot exist as an entity separate from other aspects of musical analysis, it is hoped that a coherent set of tools for analysing the production of recorded music will prove useful. The main discussion is divided into six sections, under the following headings: the development of technology; staging; ergonomics and embodiment; training and practice; the negotiation between performance practice and recording practice; and consumer influence. During the course of the article I examine the scope of existing work in this field and, in some instances, make suggestions for future investigation.