243 R E C E N Z I J E • R E V I E W S Björn Heile in Charles Wilson, ur. The Routledge Research Companion to Modernism in Music Björn Heile in Charles Wilson, ur. The Routledge Research Companion to Modernism in Music. [Routledgev raziskovalni vodnik po modernizmu v glasbi.] Routledge, 2018. 518 strani. ISBN: 9781472470409. Trda vezava 206 € (185 £), e-knjiga 124 € (111 £). Urediti zbornik na takó izmuzljivo temo, kot je »modernizem v glasbi«, je precej zahtev- na naloga, ki sta ji bila urednika Björn Heile in Charles Wilson več kot kos z delom The Routledge Research Companion to Modernism in Music. Še zmeraj pertinenten pojem, o katerem se v muzikoloških praksah pogosto razpravlja, sta urednika predstavila kot kompleksno tonsko lestvico perspektiv in vprašanj, ki »nenehno terja teoretsko pod- lago za svoj obstoj.« (str. 3) Avtorja spretno nakažeta na plejado glasov, zbranih v tem zborniku, pri čemer pojasnjujeta razlike med »modernizmom v glasbi« kot »splošnim kulturnim in umetniškim pojavom«, »modernistično glasbo« z »modernističnimi atri- buti ali modernističnimi vidiki v glasbi, pri katerih pa se vendarle zaustavimo, predem bi jih označili kot modernistične« in označbo »glasbeni modernizem« za vse pojave, ki sodijo nekako med oba termina.« (str. 4) Koristna diferenciacija teoretičnega okvira sopostavlja prakse, ki se nanašajo na pojav z dvoumnimi pomeni in časovnimi spre- menljivkami (npr. »nedavno« ali »pravkar«), kot tudi z metodološkimi (npr. »modus«). Na hitro bi lahko dejali, da avtorja avtoritativno obravnavata koncept, ki »nenehno terja teoretsko podlago za svoj obstoj.« (str. 3) Zbirka obljublja, a tudi ponudi trdno podlago za dopolnjevanje različnih vprašanj, ki so v srcu vseh glasbenih žanrsko-slogovnih diskurzov: v tem primeru raznolikih ob- razov pojma modernizma. Zgodovinska referenca v predgovoru na esej Virginije Wo- olf z naslovom »Lik v fikciji« in poudarek na permutacijah in z njimi povezanih druž- benih spremembah ponudita eleganten stranski učinek, ki bralca spodbuja k temu, da sledi zapletom in zarezam, ki izhajajo predvsem iz treh epistemologij – estetike, etike in pragmatizma. Urednika zapišeta, da se želita osredotočiti na »idejo temeljnega [»iz- vornega« (str. 7)] preloma,« na »naravo zgodovinske ločnice« in na »premik človeškega značaja, človeške občutljivosti [...], kar bi nemara motiviral takšen razdor.« (str. 6) V tem »pogoltnem« pogledu na modernizem knjiga ne le odgovarja na mnoga vprašanja, temveč jih veliko tudi zastavlja. Cela knjiga je smelo podjetje potovanj, romanj in izletov v različne zgodovinske, fenomenološke in žanrsko obarvane reference. Recenzije • Reviews MZ_2020_1_FINAL.indd 243 24. 06. 2020 12:00:52 244 M U Z I K O L O Š K I Z B O R N I K • M U S I C O L O G I C A L A N N U A L LV I / 1 Knjiga se deli v tri sklope: Temelji, Pozicije, Prakse. Dvajset prispevkov ponuja pisa- no paleto za razumevaje modernizma v povezavi z različnimi zgodovinskimi, estetski- mi, psihološkimi in sociološkimi konteksti. I. del, Temelji. Duhovit prispevek Jamesa R. Currieja »Rojstvo modernizma – iz duha komedije« obravnava »naše vse bolj zapleteno razumevanje svojega sodobnega trenutka« (str. 34) in vlogo modernistične glasbe kot neke vrste stimulansa za spopa- danje s svetom. Sarah Collins razmišlja o časovni in aksiološki dihotomiji glasbenega modernizma v svojem eseju »Kaj je bila sodobna glasba? Novo, moderno in sodobno v Mednarodnem združenju za sodobno glasbo (ISCM)«. Martin Iddon naslavlja enako vprašanje v širši sociološki in zgodovinski perspektivi v prispevku »Institucije, umetni- ški svetovi, nova glasba«. David J. Code se v članku »Modernizem in zgodovina« ukvar- ja s »trnovim vprašanjem izmuzljivega zgodovinskega izvora modernizma« (str. 108), medtem ko se Edward Campbell loteva estetike modernizma v svojem razmisleku z naslovom »Glasbena modernost, lepo in vzvišeno«. II. del, Pozicije. J. P. E. Harper-Scott v »Reaktivnem modernizmu« trezno izpostavlja ključne teoretske dileme sodobnosti, ki jih je mogoče opredeliti kot antinomijo med glasbenimi poetikami in estetikami ali kot, z njegovimi besedami, »bistveno travmo modernosti« (str. 171). Morda bi bil ta esej bolj primeren za v sklop Prakse, kamor bi so- dil tudi prispevek »Glasbeni modernizem globalno: primerjalna opažanja« Björna Hei- leja. Harper-Scott in Heile obravnavata perspektivizem modernosti in perspektivizem v modernosti kot referenci k psihološkim oziroma geografskim entitetam – obe temi sta v uvodniku napovedani kot ključni. Eva Moreda Rodriguez v svojem eseju »Glasbeni modernizem in izgnanstvo: kliše kot hermenevtično orodje« ponuja osupljiv prikaz retorike »obeh zapletenih, mnogoznačnih pojavov« (str. 199), medtem ko se Robert Ad- lington (»Modernizem: glasba ljudstva?«) provokativno loteva zgodbe o modernizmu kot pripovedi, v kateri »se motivi brezkompromisnega vodenja in predane službe pre- pletajo, včasih do točke nelagodnega protislovja.« (str. 216). Stephen Graham nadaljuje naracijo knjige v svojem članku »Modernizem za množice in modernizem množic? O popularnih modernizmih.« Nasprotno pa bi lahko prispevek Charlesa Wilsona »Čas kot je današnji: razmejevanje glasbe v 21. stoletju« bolj primeren za razdelek Temelji, saj avtorjev poudarek na mejah, dostopu, mediju, lokaciji in subjektivnosti tako rekoč kon- stituira genetiko sodobnosti. Mnogoplasten prikaz Morag Josephine Grant »Skladatelj kot teoretik komunikacije« je eruditski pogled na glasbeno vrsto, ki je danes podvržena temeljiti preobrazbi in ki lepo dopolnjuje besedilo Trenta Leiperta »Kakšna čustva nam zbuja modernistična glasba? Med subjektivnostjo in afektom«. III. del, Prakse. Kot nakazuje že naslov poglavja, je v njem bistven poudarek na študijah primerov. Besedilo »Med modernizmom in postmodernizmom: struktura in izraznost pri Johnu Adamsu, Kaiji Saariaho in Thomasu Adesu« Alastaira Williamsa je intelektualno mikaven esejistični razmislek o eni glavnih premis modernizma. Čeprav je Arnold Whittall s svojim prispevkom »Temelji in fiksacije: neprekinjenost britanskega glasbenega modernizma« postavljen v poglavje s študijami, sega njegova analiza onkraj nacionalnega konteksta in kar kliče po posebni primerjalni študiji ali vsaj po prikazu etnično/nacionalno zamejenih modernizmov (ali, pravzaprav, kakršnih koli »izmov«!) – kot vzporednica krajem in prostorom, ki so zajeti tukaj. Pravzaprav se članek »Balijski MZ_2020_1_FINAL.indd 244 24. 06. 2020 12:00:52 245 R E C E N Z I J E • R E V I E W S trenutek v novi glasbeni sceni v Montrealu kot regionalni modernizem« Jonathana Gol- dmana in prispevek »Vers une écriture liminale: serializem, spektralnost in écriture v prehodni glasbi Gerarda Griseyja« avtorja Liama Cagneyja odzivata na zgornjo idejo primerjalne študije modernizmov. Vendar pa prispevek Amy Bauer »Sodobna opera in neuspeh jezika« kot tudi tekst Marka Berryja »‘Es klang so alt und war doch so neu!’: mo- dernistična operna kultura skozi prizmo uprizoritve ‘Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg’« sociološko naravnan fokus preusmerita v žanrsko usmerjeno perspektivo. Bilo bi zelo poučno, če bi imeli tudi primerjalne študije žanrsko-slogovnih raziskav, ki bi se navezo- vale na formo. Kot zadnji nam Stefan Knapik v svojem prispevku z naslovom »Moder- nizem mainstreama: ideologija igranja violine v zgodnjem dvajsetem stoletju« odpira pomembno in do zdaj skoraj prezrto vprašanje o glasbenih nastopih. Avtor opozarja na vitalizem znotraj izvajalske prakse in želeli bi si prebrati več v oziru na skladanje, še zlasti znotraj diskurza o modernizmu, ki je odraščal z idejo o musica viva … Po branju uvoda in posameznih prispevkov sta me očarala širina in domet, s kate- rima je v tem zvezku predstavljen glasbeni modernizem. Kapo dol! Hkrati pa menim, da dandanes v muzikologiji morda ne bi bilo slabo ponovno premisliti o ureditvah, v skladu s katerimi obravnavamo različne pojave. Še zlasti ko gre za žanrsko-slogovne koncepte, kot je modernizem. Ker ima le-ta precej bogato muzikološko zgodovino, bi lahko pričakovali, da bi v dobi napredne umetne inteligence videli vsaj nekaj osnovnih sklicevanj na etablirane raziskave. Čeprav so zlati dnevi analiz izvora pojmov v glasbi mimo, njihovi obsežni izdelki, kot na primer Handwörterbuch der musikalischen Ter- minologie in podobna referenčna gradiva, v tem zborniku o glasbenem modernizmu očividno manjkajo. Vsekakor razumem omejitve takšnih projektov in moja razmišljanja še zdaleč niso nacionalno motivirana. Toda tako kot je Handwörterbuch der musikalischen Termi- nologie opravil svoje poslanstvo pri analizi rudarjenja vzorcev, še preden so računal- niki zavzeli svojo vlogo v humanističnem raziskovanju, bi bil morda aktualni glasbeni spremljevalec modernizma v glasbi bolj poučen, če bi bile pretekle raziskave tako ali drugače vključene. Vsaj digitalni študiji humanistike bi si lahko prizadevali, da bi se modernizmu v glasbi približali kot enemu od »izmov«: če bi jih kritično primerjali, bi lahko morda dosegli višjo stopnjo razumevanja nastajajočih glasbenih pojavov, ki pot- rebujejo kalibracijo pomena glede na preteklost in drug drugega. Iz istega razloga z veseljem sprejemam stališče, da je »v raznolikosti pogledov pred- nost, ne pa slabost« (str. 4) tega zvezka. Kljub temu bi bralcu koristilo nekaj bolj z dejstvi podkrepljenih analiz vzorcev, ki se skrivajo za teoretično privlačnimi pogledi na mo- dernizem v glasbi, zbranimi v zborniku. Ideje, razpršene po vsem zborniku, so denimo dobro organizirane v Stvarnem kazalu. Če iščemo, recimo, »modernizem, modernizem v glasbi«, ponujajo vnosi izjemno paleto teoretičnih konceptov, povezanih z moder- nizmom: »in komedija«, »in sodobnost«, »kritični koncepti«, »definicije« (da sploh ne omenjam definicij številnih drugih pomembnih avtorjev), »in izgnanstvo«, »genealogi- je«, »globalni glasbeni modernizem«, »‘visoki’ modernizem«, »in zgodovina« itd. Vseeno se zdi, da je »britanski glasbeni modernizem« geografsko gledano edini sistematično raziskani del zgodbe. Kje so nemški, avstrijski, francoski, ameriški, baltski itd. moder- nisti, če jih naštejem le nekaj. Že res, da so vključeni v posamezne reference, vendar MZ_2020_1_FINAL.indd 245 24. 06. 2020 12:00:53 246 M U Z I K O L O Š K I Z B O R N I K • M U S I C O L O G I C A L A N N U A L LV I / 1 zgodovinopisni vidiki razprave o modernizmu zunaj državnih in regionalnih konteks- tov še zdaleč niso natančno razdelani. Dejstvo je, da so zgodbe o modernizmu v glasbi precej različne v vsakem od teh geografskih in kulturnih okolij, temu primerno pa bi se lahko spremenila tudi dana teoretična ogrodja. Toda to nikakor ni kritika zbornika. Gre za vrhunski podvig sijajnih in očitno skrb- no izbranih umov. Tako študentom kot koncertnemu občinstvu in glasbenim učiteljem bo knjiga pomagala bolje in globlje razumeti čas, v katerem živimo, tako glasbeno kot družbeno. A ne le to, muzikološki skupnosti bo nemara pomagala pri razmisleku o tem, kaj je Nietzsche razumel kot vzajemnost med zgodovino in življenjem, primerna pa je tudi kot pomoč pri iskanju celostnega metodološkega načina, kako pristopati k muzikološkim pojmom. Brez dvoma imamo opravka z delom, ki ga je vredno prebrati od predgovora do zadnjega poglavja. Leon Stefanija (leon.stefanija@ff.uni-lj.si) Filozofska fakulteta, Univerza v Ljubljani MZ_2020_1_FINAL.indd 246 24. 06. 2020 12:00:53 247 R E C E N Z I J E • R E V I E W S Björn Heile and Charles Wilson, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to Modernism in Music Björn Heile and Charles Wilson, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to Modern- ism in Music. Routledge, 2018. 518 pages. ISBN: 9781472470409. Hardback £185 (€206), eBook £111 (€124). It is quite a task to edit a volume on a topic as evasive as “modernism in music,” and the editors Björn Heile and Charles Wilson have done excellent work with The Routledge Research Companion to Modernism in Music. Still frequently discussed and certainly a pertinent concept across musical practices, the editors present the subject as a chal- lenging gamut of perspectives and issues that “seems forever in need of a theory to account for its existence” (p. 3). They neatly indicate the variety of voices gathered in this volume, emphasizing the distinctions between “modernism in music” as “a general cultural and artistic phenomenon,” “modernist music” with “modernist attributes or modernist aspects in music that we may nonetheless balk from classifying as modern- ist,” and “musical modernism” for all phenomena falling “somewhere between the two terms” (p. 4). A helpful differentiation of the theoretical framework juxtaposes prac- tices referring to the phenomenon with ambivalent meanings and temporal variables (e.g. “recently” or “just now”), as well as a methodological one (as in “modus”). The authors, in short, authoritatively address the concept “in need of a theory to account for its existence” (p. 3). The volume promises and delivers a solid ground for complementing different issues that lie at the heart of any musical genre-and-style discourses: in this case, the heterogeneous faces of the concept of modernism. The historical reference to Virginia Woolf’s essay in the foreword, “Character in Fiction,” and the emphasis on permutations and the social changes relating to them offer an elegant spin-off thread that stimulates the reader to follow perplexities and ruptures emerging from mainly three epistemologies – aesthetics, ethics and pragmatism. As the editors note, their aim is to focus on “the notion of fundamental [“originary” (p. 7)] break,” “the nature of the historical divide,” and the shift of human character, human sensibility […] that might have motivated such a break” (p. 6). In this “omnivorous” view of modernism the whole book raises as many questions as it answers. The volume is an enterprise in trips, pilgrimages and outings into different historical, genre-related and phenom- enological references. The book has three sections – Foundations, Positions, Practices – and the twenty contributors offer a rich palette for seeing modernism networked within different his- torical, aesthetic, psychological and sociological contexts. MZ_2020_1_FINAL.indd 247 24. 06. 2020 12:00:53 248 M U Z I K O L O Š K I Z B O R N I K • M U S I C O L O G I C A L A N N U A L LV I / 1 Part I, Foundations. James R. Currie’s witty contribution “The Birth of Modern- ism - Out of the Spirit of Comedy” deals with “our increasingly complex understanding of our contemporary moment” (p. 34) and the role of modernist music as a kind of stimulans to cope with the world. Sarah Collins reflects on the temporal and axiologi- cal dichotomy of musical modernism in her essay “What Was Contemporary Music? The New, the Modern and the Contemporary in the International Society for Contem- porary Music (ISCM).” Martin Iddon addresses the same issue within the wider socio- logical and historical perspective in the “Institutions, Artworlds, New Music.” In “Mod- ernism and History,” David J. Code engages in “the thorny question of modernism’s elusive historical origins” (p. 108), while Edward Campbell addresses the aesthetics of modernism in his “Musical Modernity, the Beautiful and the Sublime.” Part II, Positions. In “Reactive Modernism,” J. P. E. Harper-Scott soberly points to the key theoretical quandaries of modernity that may be framed as an antinomy be- tween musical poetics and aesthetics, or in his words, “the essential trauma of moderni- ty” (171). Perhaps this essay would fit better into the Positions section, just as is the case with Björn Heile’s “Musical Modernism, Global: Comparative Observations.” Harper- Scott and Heile, address the perspectivism on and of modernity as a reference toward the psychological and geographical entities respectively – both issues announced as pivotal in the foreword. Eva Moreda Rodriguez, in her essay “Musical Modernism and Exile: Cliché as Hermeneutic Tool” offers a striking account on the rhetorics of “both complex, multifarious phenomena” (p. 199), while Robert Adlington (in “Modernism: The People’s Music?”) provocatively addresses the narrative on modernism as a story “within which the motifs of uncompromising leadership and dedicated service inter- mingle, sometimes to the point of uncomfortable contradiction” (p. 216). Stephen Gra- ham continues the story in his “Modernism for and of the Masses? On Popular Modern- isms.” By contrast, Charles Wilson’s “Times Like the Present: De-limiting Music in the Twenty-First Century” is better suited for the Foundations section, since his emphases on the limits, access, medium, location, and subjectivity after all constitute the genet- ics, as it were, of modernity. M. J. Grant’s versatile picture of “The Composer as Com- munication Theorist” is a well-informed view of a musical species that is undergoing a thorough metamorphosis today, which is a rather nice complement to Trent Leipert’s “How Does Modernist Music Make You Feel? Between Subjectivity and Affect.” Part III, Practices. As the title of this chapter suggests, case studies are the primary concern here. Alastair Williams offers a thought-engaging essay regarding one of the main premises of modernism in his “Between Modernism and Postmodernism: Struc- ture and Expression in John Adams, Kaija Saariaho and Thomas Ades.” Although set within the case studies chapter, Arnold Whittall’s “Foundations and Fixations: Conti- nuities in British Musical Modernism” reaches far above its national context, calls for a comparative volume, or at least an account of ethnically/nationally confined modern- isms (or any other “isms”!), as a parallel to places and spaces covered here. Actually, the “The Balinese Moment in the Montreal New Music Scene as a Regional Modern- ism” by Jonathan Goldman as well as “Vers une écriture liminale: Serialism, spectralism and écriture in the transitional music of Gerard Grisey” by Liam Cagney corespond to the idea of comparative modernisms study. However, Amy Bauer’s contribution MZ_2020_1_FINAL.indd 248 24. 06. 2020 12:00:53 249 R E C E N Z I J E • R E V I E W S “Contemporary Opera and the Failure of Language” as well as “Mark Berry’s “‘Es klang so alt und doch war so neu!’: Modernist Operatic Culture through the Prism of Stag- ing ‘Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg’” move the sociologically oriented focus toward genre-oriented perspective. And it would be so instructive to have also form-related comparative studies of genre-and-style oriented research. As the last contribution, Ste- fan Knapik’s “The Modernism of the Mainstream: An Early Twentieth-Century Ideology of Violin Playing” opens up an important and up to this point almost overlooked issue on performance. The author points to vitalism within performance practice and one could wish to read more about it also with regard to composition, especially within the discourse on modernism that grew up with the idea of musica viva. After reading the introduction and the individual contributions, I was enchanted by the breadth and scope through which musical modernism is represented in this volume. Hats off! At the same time, I feel that musicology today may need to reconsider the economies of how it addresses various phenomena, especially the genre-and-style- related concepts, such as modernism. Since it has a rather rich musicological history, one may well expect, in the age of advanced AI, to find at least some basic referencing to the established research. Although the conceptual analyses in music have aged well, the extensive form of them, as for instance in the Handwörterbuch der musikalischen Terminologie, and similar references are tellingly absent from this volume on musical modernism. I certainly understand the confines of such projects and my thoughts are far from nationally motivated. However, just as the Handwörterbuch der musikalis- chen Terminologie did its mission in pattern mining analysis before computers took their role in humanities research, the music companion to modernism in music might be more instructive if the past researches are somehow included. At least the digital hu- manities could aspire to approach modernism in music as one of the “isms”: compar- ing them critically may bring more understanding of such emergent music phenom- ena in need of calibration of their meanings with regard to the past and each other. By the same token, I gladly accept the stance that a “diversity of views is a strength not a weakness” (p. 4) of this volume. The reader could, however, also appreciate some more fact-driven analyses of patterns behind the theoretically attractive views on the modernism in music included in the volume. For instance, the ideas scattered throughout the volume are well organized in the Index. If we search, say, for “modern- ism, modernism in music” the entries offer a fantastic range of theoretical concepts related to modernism: “and comedy,” “and the contemporary,” “critical concepts,” “definitions” (without mentioning the definitions offered by many other relevant au- thors), “and exile,” “genealogies,” “global musical modernism,” “‘high’ modernism,” “and history” etc. Yet, geographically speaking, “British musical modernism” seems to be the only systematically researched part of the story. Where are the German, Aus- trian, the French, the American, the Baltic modernists, to name but a few? They are, of course, included in individual references, yet the historiographical aspects of discuss- ing modernism outside of national and regional contexts are far from clearly elabo- rated. The fact is that the stories of modernism in music are rather different in each of these geographical and cultural milieus. And they might change the given theoretical framework as well. MZ_2020_1_FINAL.indd 249 24. 06. 2020 12:00:53 250 M U Z I K O L O Š K I Z B O R N I K • M U S I C O L O G I C A L A N N U A L LV I / 1 This is far from a criticism of the volume. It is a superb endeavor of brilliant, obvi- ously carefully chosen minds. It will help students as well as concert audiences and music educators to reflect better and deeper on the time we live in, musically as well as socially. Moreover, it may help the musicological community to reflect what Nietzsche addressed as reciprocity between history and life, as well as aiding in the search for a methodologically integrative way of approaching musicological concepts. In any case, it is a book worth reading from the foreword to the last chapter. Leon Stefanija (leon.stefanija@ff.uni-lj.si) Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana MZ_2020_1_FINAL.indd 250 24. 06. 2020 12:00:53