Meropi Koutrozi, musicologist, MMus
Introduction
Perspectives of New Music (PNM) is a semiannual, peer-reviewed, academic journal which was first published in Princeton, in the fall of 1962. Through a diverse selection of topics on contemporary music, PNM aims to its contribution to the establishment of new music’s theoretical context. As the editorial team notes at the journal’s official website, ‘PNM is directed to a readership consisting of composers, performers, scholars, and all others interested in any kind of contemporary music. Published material includes theoretical research, analyses, technical reports, position papers, sociological and philosophical articles, interview, reviews, and for special purposes, short musical scores or other creative productions’.[1]
2.1. Founders, Funders and Editorials boards
PNM is an independent journal, incorporated as a 501c3 non-for-profit corporation, published continuously since 1962. From 1962 to 1972 the publication of the journal was supported by the Fromm Music Foundation, which was an American Organization, founded by Paul Fromm. The foundation has supported contemporary music in the United States, commissioning new works and sponsoring constantly concerts, festivals or seminars such as the Princeton Seminars in Advanced Musical Studies, in 1959 and 1960.
The founding editors were Arthur Berger and Benjamin Boretz[2]. As the publication of PNM was proceeding the editors alternate; Arthur Berger (Vol. 1-3); Benjamin Boretz (1-20 and 33); Edward T. Cone (4-7); Elaine Barkin (11-21); John Rahn (21-32); Joseph Dubiel, Marion A. Guck, Marianne C. Kielian-Gilbert, Andrew W. Mead, and Stefen V. Peles (34-37/1)[3]. The first advisory board consisted of significant composers and scholars; Aaron Copland, Ernst Krenek, Darius Milhaud, Walter Piston, Roger Sessions and Igor Stravinsky. In the editorial board participated Milton Babbitt, Arthur Berger, Benjamin Boretz, Elliott Carter, Lukas Foss, Leon Kirchner, Billy Jim Layton, George Perle, Mel Powell, Gunther Schuller, Seymour Shifrin. The current editors of PNM are Benjamin Boretz, Robert Morris and John Rahn.
The cover of the journal remains the same from 1962 until today[4]. The emblem used in the cover, as it is noted in every volume’s front matter, ‘is a reproduction of a drawing made by Igor Stravinsky as a visual representation of his ‘recent music’, originally published in Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Conversations with Igor Stravinsky (New York, 1959) p. 120’.
2.2.Aims and Ideological Context
Thirty years after the first publication of PNM, M. Babbitt, in his essay ‘A Life of Learning’[5], among others, refers to the absence of a ‘single medium of printed professional communication for composers and theorists’, during the fifties, as far as it concerns the crucial issues of contemporary music’s theoretical context.
[…] when Perspectives of New Music began publication, the word gates are open; articles came out of the closets; responsible, informed thinking and writing about music changed the climate of nonpopular musical society.[6]
In Europe, from 1955 until 1962 (when PNM was first published), was published a journal of an equivalent direction, devoted to contemporary music and especially to the avant-garde European musical composition, named Die Reihe. It was edited by Herbert Eimert and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Under no circumstances should not be underestimated the fact that in the first issue of PNM was published an article by John Backus[7], which was a scientific evaluation with caustic critical comments about Die Reihe, as far as it concerns the semeiology about the fundamental ideological distinctions between the American and the European avant-garde musical composition. Richard Taruskin points out this ideological gap between the two ‘schools’ and refers to the differing institutional structures, and the differences in the surrounding intellectual, cultural and economic status. Moving simultaneously within the same framework, Taruskin reveals the different philosophical background between the European and American serialism:
Darmstadt serialism was a fruit of pessimism, reflecting the ‘zero hour’ mentality of the war-ravaged Europe. It thrived on the idea of the cleanest possible break with the past. Pricentonian serialism reflected American optimism. It rode the crest of scientific prestige and remained committed to the idea of progress, which implied the very opposite attitude toward the past: namely a high sense of heritage and obligation.[8]
The aims of the journal were set clearly by the founders in the first issue, in the fall of 1962. Paul Fromm, introducing the new journal to his readers, refers to it as a ‘forum of ideas, which can become an active force in the contemporary musical world’[9]. The editors Arthur Berger and Benjamin Boretz, in their first editorial note, point out the general outline of the journal. The main purpose is to create a professional, academic journal in which different aspects of contemporary music will be presented, to feature a scholarly objective aspect of contemporary music, and ‘to probe as deeply as possible into fundamental issues that by their nature must be treated concretely and analytically with sophisticated methods, and that require investigation from many different sides’[10]. Berger and Boretz also refer to the theoretical basis of contemporary music as an ‘unexplored field’ (my quotations) in which highly specialized research needs to be held.
2.3. Content, contributors and issues featured
Major issues covered in PNM include music analysis, contemporary notation, musical performance, electronic music and computer research, improvisation, interviews of composers or scholars, philosophical essays on music aesthetics, references to several art movements, musical culture, book reviews, colloquy, reports from festivals, conferences and seminars around the world etc.
During the first years of publication PNM gained international reputation not only because of the theoretical statements in it, but also because of its contributors who were the protagonists of contemporary art music, from time to time. Milton Babbitt was a leading figure within American composers’ academic cycles, and his ideological ‘guidance’ through the years, was decisive for the ideological basis of PNM. He published numerous articles of significant theoretical content which have a great impact within the musicological cycles until today. Composers and scholars like Aaron Copland, Roger Sessions, Elliott Carter, Lukas Foss, Edgard Varese, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Yannis Xenakis, Ernst Krenek, Eric Saltzman, George Perle, Joel Lester, contributed with their articles to PNM.
Under special circumstances, PNM published issues devoted to one composer as contribute to his work. This happened in anniversaries such as a composer’s birthday (Aaron Copland, Milton Babbitt, Gunther Schuller, Donald Martino, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Benjamin Boretz, et al.) or as a memorial forum, after a composer’s death (Igor Stravinsky, Roger Sessions, Edgard Varese, John Cage, Keneth Gaburro, Yannis Xenakis, et al.).
From 1990 and onwards, can be observed that book reviews are reduced, while in the previous issues took a significant part of the journal. During the last decade (2000-2009) PNM features many articles which belong to the field of interdisciplinary musicology, exploring the interaction between contemporary music and relevant disciplines or arts, including mathematics, biology, computer sciences, acoustics, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, psychology, cognitive sciences, linguistics, visual arts, dance, theatre, etc.
PNM is a journal which welcomes innovative and ‘unorthodox’ proposals in a wide range of issues. As it is pointed out in several invitations to contributors, nothing is categorically excluded, and it is the journal’s tradition to publish ‘articles of worth which, for reasons such as technical difficulty or unorthodox form or subject, do not appeal to other journals’. The contributors are encouraged to submit articles which range far and wide in the contemporary music research. There are also calls for young composers to submit scores accompanied by their commentaries.
Conclusion
The creation and the publication of an academic journal like PNM at the early sixties, is particularly significant and reflects the spirit of the times within the American composers’ academic cycles. The publication of PNM became a statement of new music’s theoretical context, which wasn’t clearly set as a separate research field until then. The innovative character of the articles, the issues featured and the new musicological aspects presented, were part of a really ambitious aim: through the published material PNM to become a reference for the theoretical research on contemporary music. PNM transforms, develops, changes and continues until today to contribute to the international musicological research for contemporary music, having as a common axis, through all the years of its publication, an innovative, thorough view at the issues featured.
P.S.: Several important issues arise from the publication of PNM, which concern mostly the general context within which the journal was created and published, during the early sixties. Some of the questions that arise and could be the object for further research such as:
P.S.: Several important issues arise from the publication of PNM, which concern mostly the general context within which the journal was created and published, during the early sixties. Some of the questions that arise and could be the object for further research such as:
· - Exploration of the needs which lead to the creation of such an academic journal; historical, ideological and philosophical context.
· - Perspectives of New Music & Die Reihe: How the content of those periodicals reflects the spirit and the ideological differences between the American and the European avant-garde music.
· - Aesthetic directions in contemporary music featured by PNM; Criteria and factors which determine the journal’s content.
· - Exploration of the semeiological significance of the use of Stravinsky’s sketch as the emblem of the journal; what meant Stravinsky’s authority as basic ideological contributor to the first issues of PNM.
Bibliography
Printed sources
Backus, John. “Die Reihe – A Scientific Evaluation,” Perspectives of New Music 1, no. 1 (1962): 160-171.
Berger, Arthur and Benjamin Boretz. “Editorial Note,” Perspectives of New Music 1, no. 1 (1962): 4-5.
Peles, Stephen, ed. et al. The collected essays of Milton Babbitt. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.
Taruskin, Richard. The Oxford History of Western Music. Vol. 5, Music in the Late Twentieth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Electronic sources
Gable, David. ‘Fromm Music Foundation’, Grove Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com (assessed December 1, 2009).
Perspectives of New Music, http://www.perspectivesofnewmusic.org (assessed December 5, 2009).
[1] Perspectives of New Music Home Page , http://www.perspectivesofnewmusic.org (assessed December 5, 2009).
[2] Arthur Berger was a pupil of Walter Piston and Darious Milhaud and was also closely associated to Aaron Copland. Benjamin Boretz was a pupil of Berger, Roger Sessions and Milton Babbitt. So it is obvious that those ‘spiritual’ affinities formed the basic ideological and aesthetical directions of the journal, mostly during the first years of publication.
[3] Ibid. Perspectives of New Music Home Page.
[4] Every volume (issues 1 and two of every year) of PNM has a different combination of colors at the cover.
[5] This essay was first published as an American Council of Learned Societies Occasional Paper, no. 17 (1991). It originated as the 1991 Charles Homer Hanskins Lecture, one of the series of annual lectures sponsored by the ACLS and delivered by distinguished scholars.
[6] Stephen Peles, ed. et al., The collected essays of Milton Babbitt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 448.
[7] John Backus, “Die Reihe – A Scientific Evaluation,” Perspectives of New Music 1, no. 1 (1962): 160-171.
[8] Richard, Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music. Vol. 5, Music in the Late Twentieth Century. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 135-6.
[9] Paul Fromm, “Young Composers: Perspectives and Prospects,” Perspectives of New Music 1, no. 1 (1962): 1-3.
[10] Arthur Berger and Benjamin Boretz, “Editorial Note, ” Ibid., 4-5.
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