A Study On Post-modern Music And Relevant Aesthetic Issues

This dissertation, from the perspective of "post-modern" as a mode of thinking, studies the characteristics and ideas of musical creation, discusses the prominent related aesthetic issues and suggests that the strategy of music reception is abstract hearing. The dissertation focuses on post-modern music and its aesthetic issues in three aspects.Firstly, the author examines closely the post-modern views of history, aesthetics and methodology, and suggests that post-modernism is not what it appears as the anti-traditional, anti-historical and anti-aesthetic notion that "anything works". Rather, it has its own theoretical basis and acts as a change to way of thinking. Thus, the author recognizes and revises the misunderstanding and misuse of post-modern phenomenon.Secondly, the author studies the methods and ideas of musical creation under the influence of post-modern thinking since the 1950s and points out the related aesthetic issues. In this time, musical creation sought to explore new sound and new ideas and the resulted musical works constantly challenged the boundaries of music and work and that between art and life. In terms of compositional premise, such music attached more importance to reception and the composition was usually based on the experience and idea of listening to some sort of new sound. Methods from phenomenology exerted important influence on musical creation of this time. In terms of compositional approach, such music diverted from the traditional opposition between to the identity of material and form. It is the material, rather than form, that possesses the prominent position in musical works. Composers used the inherent characteristics of the sound material to structure the whole works. In terms of compositional ideas, composers resorted to the post-modern logic of "other", an attitude towards history, tradition and pluralism, illustrated by the collage music of this time.Finally, the author discusses the strategy of music reception under the influence of post-modern thinking and its aesthetic issues. Because of the reason mentioned above, the author suggests that the post-modern composition resorts to the listening to the physicality, or die Dingheit. That is to say, one listens to the sound itself as it exists. This can be called abstract hearing. It necessarily leads to extreme attention paid to the perception of sound and demands the perception as the way of reception. The author further discusses the conglomeration of the auditory perception in the context of the relationship between sound material and senses. The intentionality of auditory perception depends upon not only the projection of human consciousness but also the sound material itself. It is because of the different ways traditional music and post-modern music present their material to perceive that lead to different kinds of intentionality generated from auditory perception.Accordingly,, The problem of post-modernism is a discourse about boundary, which demands a dynamically generative process.