The Foundations of Contemporary Composing

While in the music of traditional major-minor practice, concepts such as theme or motif, phenomena such as line or melody as well as systems of syntax and rhythm are generally considered self-explanatory, in post-traditional music (i.e. New Music since 1945) the question of appropriate means that meaningfully shape the musical surface is rarely reflected upon and more often suppressed. Although there is a wealth of dogmatic answers - whether formalist systems or restorative myth-making - which claim that the problem has long since been solved, the question, whether welcome or not, is constantly posed anew. This repression can clearly be traced back to a decisive moment in the post-war avant-garde: the "zero point" of punctualism. This was undoubtedly an extreme position that could at best postpone fundamental, albeit difficult, questions of a musical typology of figures. In view of the stylistic differentiation of composition in recent decades and the vital search for a new morphology in many places, the question arises all the more urgently today: What can "figure", "gesture", "melody", "motif" etc. mean today? It is about what is more than mere sound, but not yet expression or meaning.

Musical Morphology brings together different perspectives on this question from an international circle of composers who illuminate the topic in the light of their own artistic practice. An additional essay on musical deconstruction formulates the basic problems of morphology in a theoretically new way. The contributors to this volume are: Mark André, Aaron Cassidy, Sebastian Claren, Sidney Corbett, Frank Cox, Andreas Gürsching, Wieland Hoban, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Chris Mercer, Giorgio Netti, Wolfram Schurig and Steven Kazuo Takasugi.

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