Transculturality and New Music: Terms and Context

Résumé En

This presentation started out with a very different tone, but then Trump was elected, and suddenly the notion of Transcultural New Music felt urgent to me in a way that it hadn’t before. New music, at least in France and the US, the countries I have studied most, struggles to be inclusive – I will reserve my judgment regarding Germany, because I’m still getting to know the scene here. The patriarchy is still alive and well in New Music – think of its patrilineal teacher-student family trees, or the fact that positions of power are in the hands of white men almost exclusively. Minorities, be they composers from non-Western countries, women, or racial minorities, are minimally represented within it. This is not to say that composers are not open to other cultures – they are, sometimes to an extreme degree. Pulling in influence from non-Western cultures or other media cultures (visual arts, other performing arts) has been a major part of New Music innovations for the better part of the 20th century. This is indeed a good strategy, as sociological research on networks has taught us: avant-garde movements need tight, small networks to take hold – think of the composers circulating around Darmstadt, or cliques that bonded around certain teachers – but once the movement is established, it needs outside influence to continue to innovate. This is the most basic lesson that network studies have to teach us about avant-garde movements. Thus, many of the major innovations in new music have come from the use of elements brought in from beyond the Western World – think, for example, of John Cage’s prepared piano, which was initially an attempt to replace a percussion ensemble with an African “inflection,” as per the request of the commissioner, or the influence of Simha Arom’s ethnomusicological work on Ligeti and Steve Reich, among many others, Luigi Nono’s use of Brazilian drumming patterns, or the way “westernized” non-Western composers turn to their native cultures for inspiration – think of Saed Haddad or Toru Takemitsu. I would argue that transculturality is part of the very DNA of new music, when you look at its patterns of innovation. But when you look at who is present in programming, in audiences, in ensembles, in decision-making bodies, we are very far from any kind of transcultural utopia – and I’m guessing this is also the case in Germany, because otherwise this conference would be unnecessary.