MUSIC AFTER THE FALL

Modern Composition and Culture since 1989

Tim Rutherford-johnson

University of California Press ISBN 978-0-520-28315-2 368pp (pb)

As Tim Rutherford-johnson’s fascinating chronicle of western art music notes, histories of ‘contemporary music’ usually begin in 1945. Not so this one.

The cut off here is 1989: the year the Berlin Wall fell, the atrocities of Tiananmen Square unfolded and the first whispers of the World Wide Web were heard: ‘1989 was the tipping point for the forces that shaped much of the economics,

makes for an enticingly good read

politics, and, one might say, psychology of our modern world.’ And it is this sense of psychology – the complex, messy humanity that is the beating heart of all music-making – which elevates this astute and accomplished book. Rather than structure the text chronologically or by compositional technique, Rutherford-johnson divides his book into five ‘quasipsychological states’: permission, fluidity, mobility, superabundance and loss. It is an ambitious proposition – to explore an encyclopedic array of contemporary works across such abstract themes – yet Rutherford-johnson pulls off the challenge with insight, wit and (an often-undervalued quality in musicological writing) compassion.

Be it unpicking the shrewd marketing ploys which helped spark the mass appeal of the ‘spiritual minimalism’ of Górecki, Pärt and Tavener in the early

1990s, or exploring the links between the ‘new complexity’ of Brian Ferneyhough and cloud computing, Music After the Fall presents something of the ‘ecosystem’ of modern music-making,