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NEW MUSIC AND SUSTAINABILITY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 August 2024

Christopher Fox
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Abstract

This article proposes a series of connections between the consumption of resources, the creation of new music and ideas about sustainability. A number of examples is discussed, from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, that illustrate the ways in which conspicuous, and often ethically questionable, consumption has been a signifier for innovation in new music. The article concludes by introducing three of the author's recent works, The calm of mountains, This has happened before and Hieroglyph, as models of a compositional practice that attempts to enact and embody ideas of sustainability.

Type
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Information
Tempo , Volume 78 , Issue 309 , July 2024 , pp. 90 - 100
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 For a discussion of the role of text in Sinfonia see Hicks, Michael, ‘Text, Music, and Meaning in the Third Movement of Luciano Berio's Sinfonia’, Perspectives of New Music, 20, no. 1/2 (Autumn, 1981 – Summer, 1982), pp. 199–224Google Scholar.

2 Adorno, Theodor W., Philosophy of New Music, tr. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020), p. 8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Berlioz tells the story in his Memoirs 1803–1865; see pp. 84–85 of David Cairns’ edition (London: Random House, 2002).

4 The project is discussed in Karlheinz Stockhausen, ‘Licht-Raum-Musik, HINAB-HINAUF’, Texte zur Musik 1963–70 (Kürten: Stockhausen-Verlag, 1991), pp. 155–63; see also Michael Fowler, ‘The Ephemeral Architecture of Stockhausen's Pole für 2’, Organised Sound, 15, no. 3 (2010), pp. 185–97, and Sean Williams, ‘Osaka Expo ’70: The Promise and Reality of a Spherical Sound Stage’, Insonic, 26–28 November 2015, Karlsruhe, available at https://core.ac.uk/reader/80699261 (accessed 12 April 2024).

5 See, for example, ‘Tomorrow: “Petroleo and Fueliet” – Extinction Rebellion Lambeth to Stage Disruptive Performance at BP Royal Opera House Big Screen’, 10 June 2019, https://extinctionrebellion.uk/2019/06/10/4802/ (accessed 12 April 2024).

6 ‘Born free but everywhere in chains’; Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Du contrat social; ou, principes du droit politique (Amsterdam: Marc Michel Rey, 1762), p. 1Google Scholar.

7 Christopher Fox, This has happened before (Chipping Norton: Composers Edition, 2021), introductory notes.

8 Ronald Woodley, Luminos, liner notes, p. 10. 2024, Divine Art Records, MEX77118.

9 Kabbalah scholars number the letters of the alphabet from 1 to 9, then in tens from 10 to 90, then in hundreds from 100 to 900.

10 Dan Weinstein's recording of Hieroglyph can be heard on the album Hieroglyphs (Christopher Fox, Hieroglyphs. 2022, ezz-thetics, 1030).