Piero Scaruffi's

History of Avantgarde Music

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TM, ®, Copyright © 2004 Piero Scaruffi. All rights reserved.

Post-modernism

TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

While some were indulging in ever more abstract sounds and

techniques, others returned to the past. The prevailing
postmodernist aesthetic fostered the use of "quotation" from the
past in the composition of new works. Shostakovich himself was
among the practitioners of quotation. George Rochberg (USA,
1918) with Contra Mortem Et Tempus (1965), Berndt
Zimmermann (Germany, 1918) with Die Soldaten (1964), and
George Crumb (USA, 1929) with Ancient Voices of Children
(1970) achieved significant results. Fascinated with madness and
isolation, Peter Maxwell Davies (Britain, 1934) seemed to reflect
on the avantgarde itself with the stylistic pastiches of St Thomas
Wake (1969) and Worldes Blis (1969), which would be
expressionistic if not for the strong doses of self-parody. The work
of Luciano Berio (Italy, 1925) went beyond mere quotation, and
stood as a semiotic study of human language at several levels,
for example in the Sinfonia (1968).

The nostalgics could also find solace in the opera, which

remained mostly anchored to traditional harmony: The Consul
(1950) by Giancarlo Menotti (Italy, 1911), Don Rodrigo (1964) by
Alberto Ginastera (Argentina, 1916), Bassarids (1965) by Hans
Henze (Germany, 1926), Ghosts of Versailles (1991) by John
Corigliano (USA, 1938), The Death of a Composer (1994) by
Louis Andriessen (Holland, 1939), Florencia en el Amazonas
(1996) by Daniel Catan (Mexico, 1941), Waking in New York
(1998) by Elodie Lauten (USA, 1951), Valis (1987) by Tod
Machover (USA, 1953), Emmeline (1996) by Tobias Picker (USA,
1954), Weather (1999) by Michael Gordon (USA, 1956), Ghost
Opera (1994) by Tan Dun (China, 1957), Powder Her Face
(1995) by Thomas Ades (Britain, 1971), Nanking! Nanking! (1999)
by Bright Sheng (China, 1955), etc.
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TM, ®, Copyright © 2004 Piero Scaruffi. All rights reserved.