Herbert Eimert and the Darmstadt School
The Consolidation of the Avant-Garde

How Herbert Eimert's understanding of music history has been adopted as the institutional discourse of New Music in Europe.

Max Erwin (Author)

9781108799713, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 3 December 2020

75 pages
15 x 23 x 0.5 cm, 0.12 kg

After 1951, the discourse surrounding both the Darmstadt courses in particular and European New Music more broadly shifted away from a dodecaphonic vocabulary in favour of concepts such as 'punctual music', 'post-Webern music', and 'static music', all collected under the newly-christened unity of the Darmstadt School. This study proposes a genealogy of the Darmstadt School through the institutional influence and writings of Herbert Eimert. It demonstrates that Eimert's understanding of music history - whereby technical procedures are universalised as the acme of historical progress - was adopted as the institutional discourse of New Music in Europe, and remains central to both textbook and critical scholarly accounts which attempt to make sense of the avant-garde after World War II.

1. Introduction
2. After Dodecaphony: Darmstadt 1951
3. Darmstadt, 1952
4. Stability and its Consequences
5. Conclusion
References.

Subject Areas: 20th century & contemporary classical music [AVGC6], Western "classical" music [AVGC], Music [AV]