Neue Musik – according to the common narrative – confronts us with unfamiliar sounds and forces us to question our relationship to the world. Neue Musik rouses us and is therefore always political – but is that really true? While the movement of “critical composing” invokes values such as democracy, accessibility and criticism of power, access to the field of Neue Musik is significantly dependent on educational and class privileges. Using the example of Helmut Lachenmann – one of the most prominent composers of the present day – Lena Dražić uses texts about Neue Musik as the basis for a discourse analysis that gets to the core of its political promises.
The book will be published in German.
Publication: forthcoming on June 27, 2024
About the Author
Lena Dražić obtained her PhD at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna in 2021. In 2022 she was a research fellow at the International Research Center for Cultural Studies in Vienna. Her project on attributions of meaning to the migrant genre turbo-folk music was funded by the Austrian Academy of Science and Vienna City Council. Her research focuses on questions of nationalism and politics in relation to contemporary music.
