The Quilting Points of Musical Modernism
Revolution, Reaction, and William Walton

A new theory of musical modernism, which brings contemporary philosophy into contact with music theory and interpretation.

J. P. E. Harper-Scott (Author)

9781108746830, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 January 2020

299 pages, 1 b/w illus. 25 tables 26 music examples
24.5 x 16.9 x 1.6 cm, 0.52 kg

Modernism is both a contested aesthetic category and a powerful political statement. Modernist music was condemned as degenerate by the Nazis and forcibly replaced by socialist realism under the Soviets. Sympathetic philosophers and critics have interpreted it as a vital intellectual defence against totalitarianism, yet some American critics consider it elitist, undemocratic and even unnatural. Drawing extensively on the philosophy of Heidegger and Badiou, The Quilting Points of Musical Modernism proposes a new dialectical theory of faithful, reactive and obscure subjective responses to musical modernism, which embraces all the music of Western modernity. This systematic definition of musical modernism introduces readers to theory by Badiou, Žižek and Agamben. Basing his analyses on the music of William Walton, Harper-Scott explores connections between the revolutionary politics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and responses to the event of modernism in order to challenge accepted narratives of music history in the twentieth century.

Preface
Part I. A Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing: 1. Modernism as we know it, ideology, and the quilting point
Part II. Relationship Problems: 2. Modernism, love, and truth
3. The love of Troilus and Cressida
Part III. The Revolutionary Kernel of Reactionary Music: 4. Communist modernism
5. A new community
Afterword: what to do?

Subject Areas: 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], 20th century & contemporary classical music [AVGC6], Music [AV]