The second public talk of the project “New Music: A Listener’s Guide II”

Why is contemporary academic music so often perceived as an art “not for everyone”? Who is addressed by a work that deliberately renounces the usual means of expression and demands that the listener know the context and be able to hold attention where the musical language “resists” perception?

Entering popular music is much easier: fewer conditions are needed for perception, less prior knowledge is required, and there is less listening etiquette.

In discussing this, it is hard to do without Theodor Adorno and his “Introduction to the Sociology of Music” — a text in which music is consistently treated not as an autonomous language but as a social fact embedded in institutions, the market and types of listening behavior. Adorno assigned to complex, “uncomfortable” music the status of the only honest response to the structure of modern society, and to light music the status of its symptom. The opposition turned out to be persuasive and to this day largely determines how we talk about serious and unserious music.

But this opposition has historical conditions that look different today than in the mid-20th century. This raises questions: what is wrong with the musical language of contemporary academic music itself — and what is wrong with the institutions that support this language and, in a sense, preserve it. And, symmetrically, what is wrong with popular music? Where exactly does the line run between accessibility and the standardization Adorno warned about?

Musicologist Fyodor Sofronov and Studio for New Music soloist Daria Lutsenko will talk about contemporary academic music, Adorno’s legacy, institutions, and why one should go to concerts at all today.

The project is held with the support of the Composers’ Union of Russia and the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation.