NOTES to CHAPTERS in the THESIS Notes To

vp NOTES TO CHAPTERS IN THE THESIS poc 1I C; r Notes to Chapter 1 1. On the concept, character and history of the avant garde see Shapiro 1976, Hughes 1980, Poggioli 1982, Haskell 1983, Anderson 1984, Burger 1984, Williams 1988, Frascina ed. 1985, Laing 1978. On the musical avant 1987, garde see Griffiths 1978,1979,1981, Whittall 1988, Smith Brindle Middleton 1978, Rosen 1976, Neighbour et al 1983, Nyman 1974, Schorske 1961.1 discuss these issues at greater length in Ch. 9. 1985, Cuilbaut 1983, 2. On this process see Hughes 1980, Frascina ed. Nyman Williams 1988. On music see Griffiths 1978,1979,1981,1986, 1974, Manning 1985, Kerman 1985. Chs. 2 and 9 analyse, at different levels, the process of establishment of the musical avant garde after World War Two. 1984; 3. On the modern art market see Myers 1983, Hughes on modernist and avant garde influences on popular culture and commercial art see Walker 1987, Frith and Horne 1987. 4. On the analytical concept of a cultural or intellectual field see Bourdieu 1971a and 1971b. 5. This principle of analysis is advanced for cultural analysis by Bourdieu (1968,1971a, 1979,1981), by Williams (1981), and by literary theorists such as Macherey (1978). It is also in line with recent work on modernism and post modernism, which pays attention to the different attitudes of the two cultural traditions to popular and commercial ) 1985. culture. See, for example, Huyssen 1976, Crow 1983, Foster (ed. I return to the latter issue below and in Ch. 9. 6. In referring to discourse in the thesis, I am drawing on Foucault's theory of discursive formations in which, by historical analysis, he traces the close interrelations between power and dominant cultural systems or systems of knowledge as they become embodied in institutions, technologies and practices. See Foucault 1972,1977,1980. Foucault highlights both the power of dominant cultural systems to construct institutions and practices; and the autonomous momentum of such long term cultural systems and of their institutional expression to reproduce themselves. Wolff (1983: 91) points out that Foucault did not himself produce an analysis of aesthetics and art history in terms of discursive formations, yet she sees it as a promising project. The thesis attempts, in Chapter 9, a summary form of such analysis in relation to dominant traditions in 20th century music history, and takes up the theoretical implications of this analysis in the Conclusions. Using the thesis by material I address an issue raised Foucault's analyses which he himself does not develop: whether discourse - (here that of musical modernism) - reproduces itself, or whether and how discursive transformation and change can occur. 7. This was remarked upon by Hannerz (1986) in his reply to a major review of the current state of anthropology by Ortner (1984). His call for anthropology to address the analysis of complex society, 390 including its specialised intellectual and cultural forms, of which he particularly mentions modern media, is notable for its rarity. 8. One very recent exception is the growth of museum studies, which is however more concerned with reproduction and canonisation than with the production of new art and culture. See, for example, Lumley (ed. ) 1988, Bennett 1988. 9. Exceptions to this are the studies of media professionals, their institutions and practices, found in media studies (eg Schlesinger 1978, Glasgow University Media Group 1976, Kumar 1977). 10. Exceptions include the sociological work of Faulkner (1971,1973a, 1973b) on professional film studio and orchestral musicians respectively; Kingsbury's (1988) ethnographic study of an American music conservatory; Hennion et al's study of French music conservatories (1983), and Hennion's ethnography of teaching music by solfege (1988); and Menger's report on the state subsidy of contemporary music in Europe (1980), and his sociological account of the dilemma of contemporary French serious composers and their relations with the state (1983). It is necessary to clarify briefly the use of the terms 'serious', 'classical', 'contemporary', 'modern' and 'avant garde' in relation to music. I am following the usage within the professional world of high music culture, where they are used both descriptively and evaluatively as part of a basic classification between different musics. 'Serious' and 'classical' usually refer generically and interchangably to the whole historical body of high cultural 'art' musics, of church, court and concert, dating from at least the Baroque period, if not from the Renaissance, to the present. These musics are defined by implicit contrast to musical 'low' culture - folk, popular, and mass commercial musics. See Durant (1984) for a deconstruction of 'classical' music. 'Contemporary' and 'modern' music are more chronological terms. 'Contemporary' music usually has the exclusive meaning of contemporary serious, or art, music, rather than contemporary musics writ large, including for example jazz and pop musics. Also, rather than music of the present day, 'contemporary' music often refers to the post World War Two period, from the 1950's on. Whereas 'modern' music usually refers to the longer period of serious music dating from the crisis of tonality at the end of late romanticism, ie from the late 19th century. This is known as the modernist period which, as I have mentioned, coincides with the rise of the notion of an artistic 'avant garde'. Thus, in fact, the terms 'contemporary', 'modern', 'modernist' and 'avant garde' music are often used synonomously. I use these terms both as 'emic' concepts drawn from the discourse of high music culture and of my informants, but also to delineate, and to periodise, distinct musical cultures. 11. One major text-centred approach to the social study of music, which might be called the critical semiotics of music, involves the analysis of music, or music-and-lyric, as encoding the dominant social order (Weber 1958, Shepherd et al 1977), or as conveying ideological messages (Tagg 1979,1982, Bradby and Torode 1984). 12. Wolff's (1981,1983) recent surveys of the sociology of art and 391 culture describe this tendency well and provide a good indication of current criticisms. She notes overall the preponderance of studies of art- or culture-as-ideology, with the rise from the 1970's of Marxist criticism within art history (T. J. Clark, J. Berger), literary studies (R. Williams, T. Eagleton, T. Lovell, P. Macherey) and media studies (S. Hall, Glasgow Media Group). All of these approaches focus on the reading of cultural texts - from paintings, books, to newspapers, historical television programmes - sometimes in socio-political and context, and aim to draw out their ideological character, their explicit and implicit social and political messages. These developments relate to longer traditions within Marxist cultural criticism, especially the influence of Lukacs's formalist studies of the novel. The thrust of Wolff's argument is for increased attention to be given to investigating the processes of cultural production, in order to demystify reified notions of creativity and of the absolute autonomy of art, and to throw light on the ways in which meaning is actually produced and materialised in cultural practices and institutions; yet she does not herself provide this kind of empirical research. 13. The text-centred critical semiotics of music either remains very ideal typical (Weber, Shepherd) or, interestingly, uncovers contradictions between various levels of musical or musical-and-lyrical meaning. This suggests that the operation of meaning as a whole, and of ideology, cannot be ascribed in a simple way to the musical sound or system. Sometimes it works precisely through contradictions, tensions, between different levels of meaning, one undermining the other; for example an implicit association subtly subverting or reinforcing an overt meaning (see Tagg 1982, Bradby and Torode 1984). This makes the analysis of meaning and ideology more problematic, and it also suggests the need for a more complex analysis of musical meaning as conveyed through the ensemble of mediations surrounding musical sound. These formalist approaches centred on music- or music-and-lyric text alone, then, risk ignoring the meanings embodied in the social practices and relations, and other cultural dimensions, that equally constitute the experience of music. 14. For example, Kerman (1985) calls for musicology to become a humanistic, holistic and interpretative discipline that interrogates music in its broader social and cultural frame. Other musicologists have called for an alliance specifically with cultural anthropology: for example Tomlinson (1984), who draws upon Geertz, and Treitler (1984), who cites Sahlins' cultural historical analyses as possible models for a culturalist approach to music history. 15. Laing's study looks at punk both as a subculture, and as a sector of independent cultural production within the music industry. So he brings into the analysis the organisational forms and production practices of punk musicians, analysing them both as socio-economic strategy, ie an independent sector involved in records, tapes, fanzines, retail outlets, clubs; but also as stylised symbolic interventions in, and rejections of, the practices of the mainstream rock industry. Thus punk's experiments in collective, co-operative and anarchic (non) organisation were comments on the entrepreneurial, hierarchical and profit directed rock business. Laing traces every level of meaning - the

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