CONTEMPORARY MUSIC AS A CIVILIZATION PHENOMENON

OF POSTMODERN

T.O.Kulaha
postgraduate student of the Department of Theory and Methodology
of Music Education and Choreography
Bogdan Khmelnitsky Melitopol State Pedagogical University

Abstract. The theses cover contemporary musical art as a holistic civilizational

system of postmodern and reveals the basic signs of its becoming – synthesis and
synergy.
Keywords: contemporary music, postmodern, becoming, «mixed style»,
synthesis, synergy.

СУЧАСНА МУЗИКА ЯК ЦИВІЛІЗАЦІЙНИЙ ФЕНОМЕН

ПОСТМОДЕРНУ
Т.О.Кулага
аспірант кафедри теорії та методології музичної освіти та хореографії
Мелітопольський державний педагогічний
університет ім. Богдана Хмельницького
Анотація. В тезах висвітлюється сучасне музичне мистецтво як цілісна
цивілізаційна система постмодерну та розкриваються основновоположні
ознаки його становлення – синтезування та синергія.
Ключові слова: сучасна музика, постмодерн, становлення, «змішаний
стиль», синтез, синергія.
The formation and development of contemporary musical art was caused by
the rapid changes in society: civil and world wars, economic crises, influences of
eastern cultures and jazz, scientific and technological progress, urbanization,
development of transport, sports, etc. It is also characterized by a refusing of the
metaphysical faith “into the existence of the Great Other (God, Spirit, the highest
spiritual sphere outside of human consciousness)” [1, p. 9], by transformation, and
more often, by replacement of values, etc. The synthesis, interpretation and
metamorphoses of various forms, that based on the all experience accumulated by
mankind are clearly showed in it; the conceptual-categorical apparatus is rethinked
and updated; the stereotypes are broken up, the established genre borders are eroded,
new genres are arised [8]; the original compositional and technological principles and
systems of sound relationship are appeared; the sound space is expanded; the
notation, instruments, methods of performance are updated, etc. This determined the
expansion of the boundarys of the musical language and the integration of of musical
and non-musical means of expressiveness, which furthered to the formation of a new
paradigm of musical education, which bases on the communication with the whole
world, on the communication between of different cultures, on the scientific interest
and on the desire to understand them.
Contemporary music culture is not simply a coexistence of different
autonomous and independent types, genus, genres of art but it is a systemic integrity
which self-organizes in the course of development and which moves in the history of
culture according to some general for culture and specific for art culture laws [3, p.
24-25]. In it different types of cultures, styles, traditions, forms of musical activity
enter a communication dialogue, which takes on a new rhythm of development and
evolution at this stage of informatization.
The complex interaction of different musical cultures, the musical texts of
various origins, the media coverage of modern culture, the technicalization of music,
etc. allow to comprehend music as a holistic civilization system in the composition
of the world musical culture [4, p. 79].
Postmodernism as an ideological and art direction becomes a symbol of a post-
industrial society. The characteristic signs of musical postmodern, from the point of
N. Shcherbakova, are the variant of «dump» as a picture of the world, which arises in
polystylistic opuses; the minimalism, which places the simplicity of musical language
in the first place; the quiet that staples the aesthetic search for distant in time artistic
directions and different cultures [10].
 Randomness as a philosophical category gives way to a randomness as one of
the ways to implement the authors plan. The basis of the «new music» of postmodern
is the combination of various stylistic elements as the main method of implementing
multiplicity in unity and the refusing of the priority of tradition, which leads to the
formation of a new musical reality [9], which, on the one hand, unites the results of
the development of music of previous eras, on the other hand, is a starting point for
the new music of the third millennium, in which the composers pass from the
collages and allusions to searching of organicity, assimilating the tradition into the
stylistic model of the opus by that providing alive connection of times within the
artwork.
New system of art communication allows a lot of individuals while saving
connections with tradition and promotes appearance the «mixed style», which
becomes the most important indicator of the new socio-cultural situation, which
characterizes both the new conditions for the existence of artworks and the essence
of the creativity itself [5, p. 144-160]. In this period, under the influence of
philosophical, aesthetic, political and other humanitarian currents, not only the
composition technique is being improved as a system of expressive means, the range
of figurative, genre and other possibilities of music expands, but the very essence
idea about that there is music is changing.
Synthesis and synergy become the fundamental features of contemporary
music, the basis of which, according to O. Losev (1991), is the formation of a image
as a processuality of life, which is displayed in simultaneously combination its origin,
creation and at the same time its disappearance. In this case, only pure music
possesses means to transmit «non-image» environment of life and, what is the main,
describes the becoming, by which a special excitement of the musical experience is
explained. His theory of musical becoming as a dynamic gravitation of one moment
of perpetuity to the adjoining and, in general, to all perpetuity moments of becoming
isolates out the characteristic features of music as becoming, namely:
• music is necessarily a «becoming» ;
• «becoming» necessarily gives to sense itself different its types;
 • all variation of a «becoming» pour into a one holistic «becoming»;
• each moment of «becoming» is absolutely free individually, because it is
identical with all perpetuity, beyond which absolutely nothing exists and which
therefore does not depend on anything, is not limited in anything and is always free
[6, p. 324-331].
The theory of musical «becoming» A. Losev, in our view, best reflects the
essence of not only contemporary music, but also musical education as a process.
A. Vasyurinа in her study, states that mass music culture, in which pop singing
is one of its components, has its own original, specific semantic system and own
vocal and instrumental performing style. It has a single basis in all metamorphoses
which shows itself in special, independently defined forms of musical life, associated
with the everyday practical life of a person and has its own characteristic musical
language. Her essence is revealed in complex interactions with other musical spheres,
the relation of which is understood in dialectical methods of general cultural code. In
accordance with the notions of it as a dynamically balanced system, which is
simultaneously procedurally and structurally created, it is recognized dominant
shaping element of the contemporary musical system [2]. At the same time, there is
an interpenetration of «light» and «serious» music, which is reflected in the
emergence of new synthesized genres such as art rock, classic rock, symphony rock,
rock opera, symphony jazz, etc [7]. Therefore, the addition and updating of musical
education under current conditions requires take into account of the objective
existence of different genres and music styles.
Thus, basing on the conceptual ideas considered, we state that contemporary
music in the postmodern era is as a civilizational phenomenon. These positions are
the philosophical undergraund of the formation of a pop vocal-performing thesaurus
pupils of art school.
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