Modern Music and After

Cover; Contents; Prelude; 1945; 1. Rational and Irrational: Western Europe, 1945-50; Paris, 1945-48; The Young Boulez; Boulez's Second Piano Sonata; Other Stories; Musique Concrète; Variations: Nono; 2. Silencing Music: Cage, 1946-52; Rhythmic Structuring; Towards Silence; Around Cage; 3. Total Organization: Western Europe, 1949-54; The Moment of Total Serialism 1: Darmstadt 1949 and Darmstadt 1951; Interlude: The Patrons of Modernism; The Moment of Total Serialism 2: Paris 1952; The Human Voice 1: Nono; Electronic Music; The Human Voice 2: Barraqué.;Over three decades, Paul Griffiths's survey has remained the definitive study of music since the Second World War; this fully revised and updated edition re-establishes Modern Music and After as the preeminent introduction to the music of our time. The disruptions of the war, and the struggles of the ensuing peace, were reflected in the music of the time: in Pierre Boulez's radical reformation of compositional technique and in John Cage's development of zen music; in Milton Babbitt's settling of the serial system and in Dmitry Shostakovich's unsettling symphonies; in Karlheinz Stockhausen's de.