Composing Globalization: Björn Heile (University of Sussex), Christian Utz (Kunstuniversität Graz), Geoffrey Poole (University of Bristol)
One of the most defining – but under-theorized – developments in twentieth- and twenty-first-century ‘classical’ music concerns its increasing geographic scope. The different phases of global integration – colonialism, westernization, the cold war, the current phase of accelerated and heightened globalization – have all left traces in music composed in different geographical locales and cultural contexts. But what from one perspective appears like a welcome opening-up and broadening-out of a Western ‘elite’ tradition, from a different perspective often feels like little more than neo-imperialist appropriation, universalist aspiration or essentialist exoticism.
In our panel, which consists of composers, analysts and musicologists, we want to debate different models of cross-cultural encounter in music, from earlier concepts of mimesis and quotation or ‘synthesis’ to more recent approaches such as ‘hybridity’ which evolved in the context of postcolonial criticism. The (long-term) aim is to develop an analytical methodology which adequately describes the complex interactions between musics of different geographical and cultural origin, but which is also sensitive to the power relations that are implicit in such cultural practices. In a departure from currently prevailing paradigms, we will not only discuss how ‘the other’ is represented in Western music, but also how non-Western composers engage with an overwhelmingly Western tradition and how their contributions affect our ideas of the overall geography of music, the idea of the West and the changing conceptions of self and other.
Björn Heile (U. of Sussex)
New music, globalization and the cultural geography of modernism: a neo-cosmopolitan approach
Modernism is haunted by its disavowal of what Homi Bhabha calls ‘the location of culture’. In a dogmatization of Enlightenment universalism it has largely refused to acknowledge cultural difference. But banished ghosts have the habit of returning unbidden, through the backdoor: witness the binarism between centre (e.g. Vienna, Paris, New York) and periphery in the imaginary cultural geography of modernism or its splitting of self and other.
New music is no exception to this mostly uncritiqued modernist metaphysics of space. Perhaps the most basic fallacy in standard accounts is the assumption that new music is ‘western’. While such terminology may seem innocuous enough, it obscures a mythification of ‘authentic’ origin whose consequences are far-reaching. Note how ‘non-Western’ composers of new music are assumed to engage with a ‘foreign’ cultural import and how, conversely, elements from local musical cultures are seen as ‘other’ in the context of new music. The root problem may be the assumption that modernity itself, which is correctly identified as the pre-condition of new music, is regarded as essentially western – a view that has long been refuted in the social sciences where the assumption of ‘multiple modernities’, which are more than simple imitations of the west, is widely accepted.
In order to overcome this ossified ontology of self and other, centre and periphery, we need to realize that, like all culture, new music – and not only that from its various ‘margins’ – is subject to the forces of globalization and, consequently, is thoroughly hybridized. Using a term coined by Deleuze and Guattari and frequently employed in anthropology one could say that new music is ‘deterritorialized’ and that its form of dissemination is more akin to the chaotically proliferating rhizome than neatly hierarchical tree structures. Among the consequences of such an approach for analysis has to be a greater sensitivity to hybridity and difference instead of the emphasis on ‘influence’ of the past, which appears as an attempt to contain the ‘contamination’ of the ‘other’.
In my talk I want to interrogate the cultural geography of new music in the light of current thought on globalization and culture in the social sciences. In particular, I will relate the ‘cosmopolitan turn’ to the foundational ideas of new music as expressed by Paul Bekker, arguing that a critical reassessment of Bekker’s cosmopolitan principles in the light of the experience of globalization will help to make new music a truly critical reflection of our globalized world.
Geoffrey Poole (U. of Bristol)
Transcultural composition: analytical and ethical observations from praxis
Those who have been ‘composing globalization’ in recent decades (and not merely dabbling with chinoiserie, or adding a backbeat to repackage ‘borrowed’ Africana) have generally been motivated either by the prospect of new soundworlds or by a socio-political/spiritual impulse (or both). The former suggests kinship with modernism, the latter with postmodernism. Yet in the attempt to adopt a soundworld, composers encounter techniques that are socially or religiously embedded (in the communal practice of gamelan, or the meditative breath of shakuhachi, for example) which challenge the ethic of dissociative originality. Conversely, a glow of ‘one world’ humanity may lead the postmodernist into unpalatable accusations (or indeed acts) of cultural tourism, imperialist plunder, and the ignorant abuse of sacred imagery.
Transcultural composition also raises challenges in terms of theory and reception. Whose codes of musical normality are presumed? At which level and in what parameters does the compositional detail part company with the code? And as the composer returns to work with non-transcultural mediums, is there any enduring assimilation, can it be demonstrated and distinguished from the numerous other quirks of a personal style?
I shall attempt to illustrate analytically, as an intermittently transcultural composer, what these issues mean at the level of detailed compositional decisions. This is not to presume complete objectivity. Nevertheless the thinking and action of the responsible composer in this new compositional territory is as yet undocumented: fresh raw data may provide a foothold for future theory and practice.
Having recently returned from a visiting fellowship at Korea National University of Traditional Arts, I have been struck by the rich variety of compositional attitudes evident among living South Koreans as they balance the ‘modern’ with the ‘traditional’ arts in a dynamic, self-reflexive way that is regarded as integral to contemporary social and national evolution. It may be that the West could usefully learn from such examples of integrity in terms of the construction of contemporary identity.
Christian Utz (Kunstuniversität Graz)
Difference, stratification, hybridization: works for Western-Asian instrumental ensembles – analytical premises and methodology
The postulation that each musical analysis should strive for a balanced perspective on both context-related (sociocultural, historical, aesthetic) and ‘immanent’ (structural, symbolic, semiotic) factors appropriate to the specific idea of a musical work can be called a commonplace after recent (or ‘new’) musicology’s comprehensive criticism of technical analysis (even if some aspects of this criticism surely remain debatable). In the case of new compositions for instrumental ensembles comprising Western and East Asian instruments this argument seems to be particularly apt, since such constellations inevitably imply wider context-related problems that clearly reach beyond questions of how an individual work is set out. This paper tries to develop analytical methods and categories that enable researchers to trace connections between musical texts and contexts in this new ‘genre’ of Western-Asian instrumental ensembles.
A new type of art music for bi-cultural instrumental settings has emerged in Japan, China and Korea since the 1960s with few precursors in the first half of the 20th century. This paper first briefly summarizes crucial early historical stages from an East Asian perspective, focusing on settings that use solo Asian instruments in combination with a Western orchestra, and connects these to the sociohistorical key concepts ‘co-existence’, ‘appropriation’ and ‘individualization’. In the main section, the paper then introduces more recent works for chamber ensembles in which Asian and Western instruments are confronted on a more balanced scale – ensembles that are not least indebted to a new generation of East Asian instrumental soloists that seek to develop new repertoires for their instruments.
The analytical methodology focuses on the question of if and how cultural concepts are represented, negotiated, fragmented or ignored in the musical structure. Three compositional strategies are introduced, namely ‘difference/alterity’ (essentialized cultural concepts are introduced separately), ‘stratification’ (cultural concepts are transformed into musical strata or layers that are subject to musical interaction), and ‘hybridization’ (cultural concepts are either transferred to ‘non-cultural’ areas such as psychoacoustics, or deliberately ignored in order to doubt their validity). Key sections from the following works exemplify these categories: T?ru Takemitsu’s Distance (1972) for oboe and sh?, Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera for pipa and string quartet (1994), Heinz Reber’s Music for Sheng (2003) for Chinese-Western ensemble, Y?ji Takahashi’s Mimi no ho (1994) for sh?, viola and narrator, Koo Bonu’s nah/fern (1998) for kayag?m and string trio and Chaya Czernowin’s Excavated Dialogues – Fragments (2003–4) for Chinese-Western ensemble. Most of these case studies suggest that the terms borrowed from cultural studies (which were coined to describe social processes) are not always adequate to grasp the complex structural networks and aesthetical experiences implied in this music.
It becomes apparent that the most successful compositional approaches in this field tend to consider the potential as well as the limits of a transformation and reconfiguration of cultural memory systems, and thus challenge conventional concepts such as ‘integration’ or ‘cultural synthesis’. The analysis of the case studies also implies that divergences between aesthetic ideas and compositional realization seem to occur repeatedly in this field of new music. Musical analysis can make such sub-structural conflicts visible, enhance their social-semantic implications and provide new insights from an interpretation of this often paradoxical relationship between compositional conceptualization and realization.