Two crucial moments in the formation and disintegration of musical
modernity and the musical canon occurred at the turn of the seventeenth
and the first half of the twentieth century. Dr Ljubica Ilic provides a
fresh and close look at these moments, exploring the ways musical
compositions shift to and away from ideological structures identified
with modernity. The focus is on European art music whose grand
narrative, defined by tonality and teleological development, begins in
the seventeenth century and ends with twentieth-century modernisms. This
particular musical "language game" coincides with historical changes in
the phenomenological understanding of space and selfhood. A key concept
of the book concerns musical compositions that remain without proper
conclusions: if the wholesome (musical) work is a manifestation of
wholesome subjectivity, the pieces Ilic explores deny it, reflecting
conflict of the individual with previous beliefs, with contexts, and
even within the self as the basic modern condition. The musical work is,
in this case, still bounded and well-defined, but fractured by the
incapability or refusal to satisfactorily conclude: the implicit cut
forced upon it changes the expected musical flow or - speaking in
spatial terms - it influences the musical form. By using the metaphor of
space, Ilic explores: how the existence of a separate self as a primary
feature of Western modernity becomes negotiated through awareness of
the subject's own independence and individuality; innerness as something
entirely separate from its surroundings; and the collective space of
social interaction. Seeing musical storytelling as a metaphoric
representation of selfhood, and modernity as a historical continuum,
Ilic examines the boundaries and relationships between the musical work,
the subject, and modern European history.
Contents: Introduction: the limits of the work and the limits of the
world; Mirrors and echoes: beyond the confines of theatrical space; The
unutterable silence: O Word, Thou Word that I Lack; The terror of
desire: arbitrary outcomes or the dei ex machinis; Bibliography; Index.
About the Author: Ljubica Ilic holds degrees from the University of Arts
in Belgrade (BA in musicology) and University of California, Los
Angeles (MA and PhD in musicology), where she was a Chancellor’s fellow.
Ilic was an Ahmanson-Getty Postdoctoral Fellow (2007-2008), and a
visiting professor in the department of musicology at UCLA (2008-2009).
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Content )
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Introduction )
Published: October 2010
Format: 234 x 156 mm
Extent: 132 pages
Binding: Hardback
