Abstracts
Abstract
In a short ‘vox pop,’ written for Circuit in 2010, on the subject of the ‘future’ of new music, I proposed that new music — or the version of it tightly intertwined with what was once thought of as the international avant-garde, at any rate — might today be better thought of as a sort of subculture, akin to the spectacular subcultures of goth and punk, but radically different in that they developed from the ‘grassroots,’ as it were, while new music comes from a position of extreme cultural privilege, which is to say it has access, even now, to modes of funding and infrastructure subcultures ‘proper’ never have. This essay develops this line of enquiry, outlining theories of subculture and post-subculture — drawing on ‘classic’ and more recent research, from Hebdige and Cohen to Hodkinson, Maffesoli, and Thornton — before presenting the, here more detailed, case that new music represents a sort of subculture, before making some tentative proposals regarding what sort of subculture it is and what this might mean for contemporary understandings of new music and what it is for.
Keywords:
- avant-garde,
- neo-tribes,
- new music,
- subculture
Résumé
Dans un court « vox pop » rédigé pour Circuit en 2010, sur le thème de « l’avenir » de la nouvelle musique, j’ai proposé que cette dernière – ou, dans tous les cas, sa version étroitement entremêlée avec ce qui fut considéré comme l’avant-garde internationale – puisse être aujourd’hui mieux pensée comme une sorte de sous-culture, semblable à celles, spectaculaires, du goth et du punk, quoique radicalement différente en ce que ces dernières se sont développées « de la base », pour ainsi dire, tandis que la nouvelle musique est issue d’une position extrêmement privilégiée culturellement : elle a accès, encore aujourd’hui, à des modes de financement et d’infrastructure dont les sous-cultures « à proprement parler » ne bénéficient jamais. Cet essai développe la question par la description des théories de la sous-culture et de la post-sous-culture – en faisant appel aux recherches tant « classiques » que plus récentes, de Hebdige et Cohen à Hodkinson, Maffesoli et Thornton –, avant de présenter le cas, plus détaillé ici, de cette nouvelle musique qui représente une sorte de sous-culture, puis d’énoncer quelques propositions provisoires sur la nature de cette sous-culture, ce que cela pourrait signifier pour la connaissance contemporaine de la nouvelle musique et à quoi cela pourrait servir.
Mots-clés :
- avant-garde,
- néo-tribus,
- nouvelle musique,
- sous-culture
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Appendices
Biographical note
Martin Iddon est né à Manchester en 1975. Il a étudié la composition et la musicologie aux universités de Durham et Cambridge et a également suivi des cours particuliers de composition auprès de Steve Martland, Chaya Czernowin et Steven Kazuo Takasugi. Iddon a enseigné au University College Cork et à l’Université de Lancaster avant de se joindre à l’Université de Leeds en 2009 en tant que directeur de l’école de musique et professeur de musique et esthétique. Sa musique a été jouée en Amérique du Nord, en Europe et en Australasie par des interprètes tels que l’ensemble SurPlus, ekmeles, le Kairos Quartett, Eva Zöllner et Rei Nakamura. Son disque, pneuma, est paru en 2014. Ses livres, New Music at Darmstadt et John Cage and David Tudor ont été publiés aux Cambridge University Press.
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