White Musical Mythologies: Sonic Presence in Modernism

Edmund Mendelssohn's book White Musical Mythologies explores the relationship between modernist thinkers and composers and non-European and pre-modern cultures, suggesting that the avant-garde ideal of pure sound was an expression of western ethnocentrism. The book pairs different musicians with each other, showing how they re-created or appropriated non-European forms of expression as they conceived music ontologically, thinking music as something immediate and immersive. These modernist artists believed that the presence effects of sound were more real and powerful than the outmoded norms of the European musical past.

Format: Hardback
Length: 306 pages
Publication date: 12 September 2023
Publisher: Stanford University Press

In a sweeping narrative that spans from the fin de siècle Paris to the 1960s, Edmund Mendelssohn delves into the lives and works of modernist thinkers and composers who ventured into the realms of non-European and pre-modern cultures, seeking to forge new conceptions of pure sound. By pairing Erik Satie with Henri Bergson, Edgard Varèse with Jean Bataille, Pierre Boulez with Antonin Artaud, and John Cage with Jacques Derrida, White Musical Mythologies presents an ambitious critical history of the ontology of sound, suggesting that the avant-garde ideal of pure sound was always an expression of Western ethnocentrism.

Within the pages of this book, each of the musicians studied is explored as they re-created or appropriated non-European forms of expression, often viewing music as an immediate and immersive experience. From Satie's explorations of mysticism and exoticism in the bohemian Montmartre of the 1890s to Varèse's encounters with ethnographic exhibitions and surrealist poetry in 1930s Paris, and from Boulez's endeavor to theorize a form of musical writing that would absorb the sounds of non-European musical traditions to Cage, who drew inspiration from Eastern thought as he wrote about sound, silence, and chance, the reader is taken on a journey through the creative minds of these modernist artists.

These modernist composers believed that the presence effects of sound in their own time were more real and powerful than the outdated norms of the European musical past. By examining musicians who strove to produce sonic presence, specifically by re-thinking the concept of musical writing (écriture), the book demonstrates that we cannot fully understand French theory in its novelty and complexity without the inclusion of music and sound.

Through its meticulous exploration of these musical relationships, White Musical Mythologies offers a fresh perspective on the history of French theory, shedding light on the ways in which modernist thinkers and composers sought to transcend the boundaries of Western culture and forge new paths of artistic expression. It is a testament to the enduring power of music and sound to shape our understanding of the world and to inspire generations of artists to come.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781503636347