Table of Contents

Prelude
1945

1. Rational and irrational: western Europe, 1945-50
Paris, 1945-8 - The young Boulez - Boulez's Second Piano Sonata - Other stories - Musique concrète - Variations: Nono

2. Silencing music: Cage, 1946-52
Rhythmic structuring - Towards silence - Around Cage

3. Total organization: western Europe, 1949-54
The moment of total serialism 1: Darmstadt 1949 and Darmstadt 1951 - Interlude: the patrons of modernism - The moment of total serialism 2: Paris 1952 - The human voice 1: Nono - Electronic music - The human voice 2: Barraqué

4. Classic modernism and other kinds: the United States, 1945-55
Schoenberg - Carter - Babbitt - Home-made music - Wolpe - After silence

5. The Cold War

6. Extension and development: western Europe, 1953-6
From points to groups - Systems of organization - Le Marteau sans maître - Sound and word - ...how time passes... - Statistics

1956

7. Mobile form: 1956-61
Cage - Stockhausen and Boulez - Boulez and Berio - Barraqué - Exit from the labyrinth

8. Elder responses
Stravinsky - Messiaen - Varèse - Symphonists and others

9. Reappraisal and disintegration: 1959-64
Questioning voices: Ligeti, Bussotti, Kagel - Stumbling steps: Kurtág - Listening ears: Cage, Young, Babbitt - Exploiting the moment: Stockhausen - The last concert: Nono

1965

10. Of elsewhen and elsewhere
The distant past - (The imaginary past) - The distant or not so distant east - Quotation - Meta-music

11. Music theatre
Opera and 'Opera' - Music theatre - Instrumental theatre

12. Politics
Cardew - Rzewski - The composer in the factory

13. Virtuosity and improvisation
The virtuoso - Virtuosity in question - The electric musician - Improvisation

14. Orchestras or Computers
Ochestras - Computer Music

15. Minimalism and melody
New York minimalism - Minimalism in Europe - Melody

16. Ending

1975

17. Holy Minimalisms
Pärt - Tavener and Górecki - (Messiaen) - Ustvolskaya

18. New Romanticisms
Rihm - Schnittke, and the hectic present - Gubaidulina, and the visionary future - Silvestrov, and the reverberating past - Symphony? - Feldman and loss - Lachenmann and regain

19. New Simplicities
Cage, or innocence - Denyer, or outsiderness - Kurtág, or immediacy - Holliger, or extremity - Sciarrino, or intimacy

20. New Complexities
Ferneyhough - Finnissy - Charged solos

21. Old Complexities
Carter and the poets - Xenakis and the Arditti Quartet - Nono and listening - Stockhausen and Licht - Birtwistle and ritual - Berio and memory - IRCAM and Boulez

22. Spectralisms
Radulescu and Tenney - Grisey - Vivier

23. (Unholy?) Minimalisms
Reich - Andriessen

24. Eclecticisms
Kagel et al. - Donatoni - Bolcom and Adams - Ligeti

1989

25. Towards mode/meme
Rootless routes: Ligeti - Memory's memorials: Berio and Kurtág - Remade modes: Adams, Adès, Benjamin - Pesson's past and Pauset's - Traditions' tracks: around Zorn

26. Towards the strange self
Act I: Schneewittchen - Entr'acte: Kurtág's Beckett - Act II: Luci mie traditrici - Entr'acte: Birtwistle's Celan - Act III: Three Sisters - Entr'acte: Kyburz's no-one - Act IV: Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern

27. Towards transcendence
Gubaidulina and Christ - Haas and darkness - Harvey and the Buddha - Grisey and rebirth

2001

28. Towards change?

Resources
Index

About the Author

Paul Griffiths is an acclaimed writer on contemporary and classical music whose books include A Concise History of Western Music and The Penguin Companion to Classical Music. He is also known as a librettist (Elliott Carter's What Next?) and novelist. In 2002, Griffiths was honored by the French government as a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Reviews

"Recommended for all libraries serving music programs at the undergraduate level or higher. There is a wealth of information here, and few write as knowledgeably and engagingly on new music as Griffiths." --Fontes Artis Musicae
"Griffiths has done an outstanding job of making this music at least intellectually accessible. It is our job as listeners, if we seriously care, to seek it out and try to encounter it on its own terms. Highly recommended for libraries with sections on new music, composition, music theory and contemporary aesthetics/philosophy." --Music Media Monthly
"Modern Music and After remains as close a definitive survey, study, guide and analysis to its field as there is; it can be recommended without reservation. The standards of scholarship and authorship are indeed high....Production standards, are of course, high; and the price is beyond reasonable -- that alone should convince you to buy this third edition, even if you've read the earlier one(s)...the updates and referencing are significant. For a
comprehensive, readable, authoritative, entertaining, lively, open-minded and all round well-written book on the development of music in our time, there is no better." --Classical.net
"Recommended for all libraries serving music programs at the undergraduate level or higher. There is a wealth of information here, and few write as knowledgeably and engagingly on new music as Griffiths." --Fontes Artis Musicae
Praise for the first edition:
"Griffiths is excellent about a whole host of composers he admires....Any reader, enthusiast or specialist, will find much to interest and provoke. This book is probably the best of its kind in English today."--Ian Pace, Tempo: Quarterly Review of Modern Music
"Griffiths is so fluent, so practiced a writer in this field that it is understandable if the closest he gets to sceptical disengagement is in suggesting that a composer leaves critics, and even musicologists, lost for words." --Arnold Whittall, The Musical Times
"[A] marvellously thought-provoking and engaging text."--The Musical Times
"A must for the student, and also for the general reader."--The Times
"As impressive for its accuracy, as for the clarity, acumen, and wit of its writing." --Classical Music