MC: Harry Lehmann: What is Conceptual Art? (GCSC)

Conceptual music plays a crucial role in understanding contemporary art music respectively the so-called New Music today. In this master class, I would like to present and to put up for discussion 33 theses on conceptual music. The starting point is an observation. Nearly a half-century after the establishment of Conceptual art, Conceptual music is today developing into its own distinct genre. Why can we observe this kind of 'postponed history' in music? In order to analyze this question, it is helpful to distinguish between analog "historical Conceptual music" and "actual digital Conceptual music" which has been composed for and distributed through YouTube in the last ten years. One can show that historical Conceptual music was blocked institutionally by the Music system of the 20th century. Therefore, it was present only marginally within New Music or emigrated from New Music to the visual arts. The reason for that is that historical Conceptual music was lacking an adequate storage and distribution medium. In times of the radio and the record industry, music which does not sound like music was almost invisible in the music system. Today, Conceptual music works as a catalyst for a paradigm shift in contemporary art music. Art music is no longer following the idea of absolute music but an idea of relational music which relates to 'extra-musical material' like video and text.

Reading advice:

»33 Thesen zur Konzeptmusik«, in: MusikTexte 145/2015, S. 78f. 

»33 Thesis on Conceptual Music« (English Translation)

»Konzeptmusik. Katalysator der gehaltsästhetischen Wende in der Neuen Musik«, in: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 1/2014, S. 22-25, 30-35, 40-43.

»Conceptual Music as Catalyst or the Gehalt-Aesthetic Turn in New Music« (English Translation)