At the beginning of 21st century the questions about compositional thinking and compositional practice are more fundamental even than at time of birth of “New Music” 100 years ago. Starting from three challenges the article shows in three parts the problems and possible strategies to rise these challenges.
First point is the sociological question, which arises from the acceptance of the fact, that the structures of producing music and presenting the results in public, which are developed in 19th century, do not fit for contemporary music. The second point is the question of musical syntax and semantic connotations of composition, which is the main result of the fact, that no new syntactical order of musical structures and no reference to strong semantics can solve the current problems of composition. The third — and most crucial — point is the fact that composition as every production of art takes place today in a situation which is characterized by a chaotic mixture of reality and simulation (or — even worse — by the replacement of the first by the second) and the extensive domination of irony which destroys communication, even its possibility.
“At the crossroads of composition” shows — following paths of Pavel Florenskij — in the first part, the new forms of presentation will not fill the gap between contemporary music and a public which is more and more alienated even to “classical music”, but on the other hand music needs general public. In the second part it is shown, that every syntax which is based on the paradigm of the western European music (music is a constellation of “notes”) came to its end in the antagonism of strict serial syntax and results of chance operation, because the sounding result is very the same. So at least this paradigm has to be augmented or even replaced. In the last part is discussed if art today can escape the attack of simulation against reality under conditions in which word, pictures and sounds are infected with irony. At the end it seems that there is no instruction, which can be described as strategy of compositional thinking and compositional practice to solve the problems. The only what can be said for sure is that at crossroads of composition any composer
must decide and that he or she will be responsible for the decision inscribed in the work and in the music.
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