This collection of essays delves into the historiographical traditions that have dominated how the stories of European postwar avant-garde music are told, seeking to approach commonplaces of that history writing from new perspectives. The contributors revisit subjects as varied as the impact of long-playing records on the emergence of open works, Messiaen's interest in non-European musical traditions, Xenakis's turn to information theory, Kagel's strategic invention of a new genre, Berio's dependence on funding from American foundations, and the ways in which figures like Boulez, Stockhausen, Pousseur, and Nono constructed their musical ancestries. Leading experts in their respective fields, the volume's authors have sought to rethink the historiography of European experimental music of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s in ways that resituate that small but influential milieu in broader historical and cultural contexts. In doing so, they suggest new directions and insights for students and specialists of twentieth-century music and music historiography.
About the Author: Anne-Sylvie Barthel-Calvet is Maître de Conférences specializing in the study of contemporary music in the Music Department of the Université de Lorraine (Metz). A former student of the École Normale Supérieure (Paris), the Université de Paris-Sorbonne, and the Université de Strasbourg, she earned her PhD, Le rythme dans l'oeuvre et la pensée de Iannis Xenakis, at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. A specialist on the life and music of Iannis Xenakis, Barthel-Calvet is the author of numerous articles on the composer and is currently preparing a biography of Xenakis and an in-depth study of his rhythmic techniques. Barthel-Calvet has also published extensively on the analysis of twentieth-century music and on the musical life and cultural politics of the twentieth century, in journals including Revue de Musicologie, Analyse musicale, Intersections- Revue canadienne de musique, Figures de l'art, Cahiers philosophiques and Histoire Économie Société. She is particularly invested in techniques of genetic criticism and the development of critical historiographic approaches to new music. Member of the research groups IRCAM and GREAM, she recently participated in the GEMME research project on musical gesture in contemporary music funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR).
Christopher Brent Murray teaches music analysis at the Université libre de Bruxelles where he has been associated as a postdoctoral researcher since 2011. Educated in composition and music theory at the Eastman School of Music (BM) and New York University (MA), he completed his studies in France, with a doctoral dissertation in musicology at Université Lumière Lyon 2 (Le développement du langage musical d'Olivier Messiaen, 2010). A specialist on the music of Olivier Messiaen, he studies diverse aspects of French and Belgian musical culture, particularly musical life during the Second World War, the evolution of the professional musician's trade during the twentieth century and historical instruction techniques at the Paris Conservatoire. The author of numerous chapters and articles (Journal of the American Musicological Society, 20th-Century Music, Revue de musicologie, Revue belge de musicologie) Murray is also the principal editor and project instigator of Musical Life in Belgium During the Second World War (a special volume of the Revue belge de musicologie co-edited with Marie Cornaz and Valérie Dufour) and co-author with Yves Balmer and Thomas Lacôte of the forthcoming volume Le modèle et l'invention: Olivier Messiaen et la technique de l'emrpunt (Symétrie, 2017).
