Between autonomy of music and the composer’s autonomy. Notes on modernisms and traditionalisms in Slovenian music of the 20th century

Abstract

The aim of this article is to examine the relations between the old and the new in the context of 20th-century Slovenian music. The question about the old and the new is seen not only as a question of different facets of an age-old opposition, but also as a complex issue of the epistemological contextualization of those different facets. Centered on the main historiographical entries – the avant-garde, modernity, traditionalism, and post-modernity –, the outline of the 20th-century Slovenian musical culture endeavors to point out what is a common problem of the Western musical heritage from the past century: the problem of defining constituents of the old and the new within different epistemological contexts.

Keywords

• new music
• contemporary music
• postmodern music
• epistemology of music analysis
• sociology of music