Music and postmodernity

New Formations - ISSN 0950-2378
Volume 2008 Number 66

Music and postmodernity
Jean-François Lyotard pages -

Abstract

Translated by David Bennett

Lyotard rehearses his theses about postmodernism as incredulity towards metanarratives, and follows Schoenberg and Adorno in suggesting that the history of Western music may be thought of as ‘the grand narrative of the emancipation of sound’ from the inherited rules and customs of composition - rules that were discovered to be neither natural nor necessary but purely contingent. Lyotard proposes understanding the artistic value of a musical composition in terms of its status as a sonic ‘event’, or ‘geste’, which gives us an intimation of the ‘sonorous matter’ that is before or outside of all musical expression or meaning, and hence of all communication between subjects. Such an ‘event’ or ‘geste’ throws all narratives of development, modernisation or revolution - all periodisations of art and culture - into crisis, insofar as it puts into question what music, listening and ‘sonorous material’ itself might be.

SORRY - you are not registered as being permitted online access to the full text of this article

You have the following options:

  1. If you are viewing this via an institution or academic library you can ask that your institution takes out a Subscription to this journal.
  2. If you already have a Personal Subscription please login below


    Forgotten your username / password? Click here to locate

  3. Purchase an annual Personal Subscription
    PRINT + DIGITAL personal subscription (£45 / year)
    DIGITAL personal subscription (£30 / year)
    A Personal Subscription provides immediate access not only to the single article you are seeking, but also to all past and future articles in this journal up to the expiry of your annual (calendar year) subscription.
  4. Purchase immediate access to this single article (UK£7.00) - Buy article Coming Soon

To cite this article
Jean-François Lyotard (2008) Music and postmodernity, New Formations, 2008(66), -

Share this