From 1989, or European Music and the Modernist Unconscious

What happened to musical modernism? When did it end? Did it end? In this unorthodox Lacanian account of European New Music, Seth Brodsky focuses on the unlikely year 1989, when New Music hardly takes center stage. Instead one finds Rostropovich playing Bach at Checkpoint Charlie; or Bernstein changing “Joy” to “Freedom” in Beethoven’s Ninth; or David Hasselhoff lip-synching “Looking for Freedom” to thousands on New Year’s Eve. But if such spectacles claim to master their historical moment, New Music unconsciously takes the role of analyst. In so doing, it restages earlier scenes of modernism. As world politics witnesses a turning away from the possibility of revolution, musical modernism revolves in place, performing century-old tasks of losing, failing, and beginning again, in preparation for a revolution to come.

“"With refreshing, indeed swashbuckling ambition, From 1989 seeks out the meaning of musical modernism. . . . From the rubble of Schoenberg and Mahler, mortared using the wreckage of Lacan and Adorno, Brodsky constructs a fantastical theoretical cathedral - a 'monument of its own magnificence' (to use Years's phrase) rather than a building for uncritical worship."”

"Brodsky is never less than virtuosic in conveying maximum authority on a huge range of complex and often difficult-to-access material. While creating no expectations of gazetteer-like comprehensiveness, Brodsky links detailed technical accounts of compositional contexts to his wider topics concerning modernism and the unconscious." -- Arnold Whittall Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle
What Brodsky ultimately seeks to find in the tangled web of allusion and citation he pulls together here is not so much freedom as a kind of scalpel to cut cords that bind the modern project to the very notion of a future—of the “new"—and thereby condemn it to repeat the past. lt's a project he acknowledges as more or less impossible, but perhaps no less worthy for all that. -- Robert Barry The Wire
"Brodsky’s brilliant and engaging book...opens the way for a rethinking of musical modernism.... It is a virtue of From 1989 that the questions it raises provoke still more." Critical Inquiry
"With refreshing, indeed swashbuckling ambition, From 1989 seeks out the meaning of musical modernism. . . . From the rubble of Schoenberg and Mahler, mortared using the wreckage of Lacan and Adorno, Brodsky constructs a fantastical theoretical cathedral — a 'monument of its own magnificence' (to use Years's phrase) rather than a building for uncritical worship." Gramophone
"In bringing together music, history, psychoanalysis, critical theory and ‘New Modernist Studies’, From 1989 draws on a vast range of perspectives and sources. As an exploration of psychoanalytic ideas in counterpoint with the New Music and events of the late twentieth century, this book will be of interest to a reader already immersed in both disciplines." Tempo
"[Brodsky’s book] displays remarkable care. Its greatest treasure is namely a profound knowledge of tradition and of cultural-historical contexts, which, moreover, is given a broad foundation by sharp analytical observations on many works." -- Stefan Drees Neue Zeitschrift für Musik

Seth Brodsky is Assistant Professor of Music and the Humanities at the University of Chicago.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.