Modernist versus postmodernist aesthetics: Contemporary music criticism and the case of Matthew Hindson

Abstract

While stylistic and thematic tendencies associated with postmodernism in the last two decades in the fields of literature, the visual arts, philosophy and social theory are also a striking feature of recent music culture, music critics, historians and composers have been reluctant to embrace the postmodern label or to confront aesthetic, cultural and philosophical issues that have become identified more widely in the arts with postmodernism. This essay introduces a collaborative research project by a musicologist and cultural theorist who examine critical reception of the works of Australian composer Matthew Hindson in order to test the hypothesis that a combination ofignorance of, and hosti..