Determinism, aleatorism and tradition : the relationship between the analysis and compositional technique of selected music from 1945-64

Abstract

During the period under consideration in this study, serious music was concerned with a fundamental reassessment of compositional technique and aesthetics. Various different and sometimes opposing techniques were developed at the time, and each of these was often cast as the one true way forward, despite the parallel existence of the others. Today we can perhaps group most of these together under the label ‘modernist’; we can certainly say that composers of today are still learning from or reacting to this rich period, so that they tend to categorise current music into ‘modern’ or ‘post-modern’. The music of the leading composers in the 1950s-60s was characterised by each one’s ‘trademark’ technique, which in each case here was the most innovative aspect, but not the sum total of their overall technique. These personalised techniques often appear to form a barrier for the listener, as they may lead to (or appear to lead to) a music that includes important but inaudible structures. This in turn poses a problem for the role of analysis: whether to address these with a substantial account of how the music was assembled, or whether to address the heard structures. The approach here is to investigate both structures separately, then to comment upon the relationship between them, and finally to draw general conclusions.