This Element introduces the notion of curatorial composing to account for certain musical practices that emerged from the 1960s as the founding concepts of music as an art – instituted in the modern era – were systematically dismantled. It raises the key question of how musical value and authority might be produced without recourse to an external principle, origin, transcendental framework, or other foundation. It argues that these practices do not dismiss the issue of value or simply relativise it but shift the paradigm to a curatorial concern for composing public encounters and staging events. The Element shows that Lydia Goehr's elaboration of the work-concept provides a framework that was transformed by John Cage in his work from 0'00” (1962) onwards. The Element then introduces Heiner Goebbels' practice and focus on his role as Artistic Director of the Ruhrtriennale (2012–14), which it argues was an extension of his curatorial composing.

This Element examines the factors that drove the stylistic heterogeneity of Chen Yi and Zhou Long after the Cultural Revolution. Known as 'New Wave' composers, they entered the Central Conservatory of Music once the Cultural Revolution ended and attained international recognition for their modernisms after their early careers in America. Scholars have often treated their early music as contingent outcomes of that cultural and political moment. This Element proposes instead that unique personal factors shaped their modernisms despite their shared experiences of the Cultural Revolution and educations at the Central Conservatory and Columbia University. Through interviews on six stages of their development, the Element examines and explains the reasons for their stylistic divergence.

There are as many ways of creating music as there are composers in the world, with a vast array of possible methods and practices. This book provides essential critical and practical tools for composers as they try to navigate this complex landscape, whilst also offering provocations for practitioners discovering their own voices and solidifying their place in their musical communities. Designed to be a companion in the truest sense, the book offers practical support throughout the creative process and thought-provoking insights on technical questions for a range of compositional approaches.

As one of only a few pieces not primarily inspired by Messiaen's Catholic faith, but by human love as described in the romance of Tristan and Isolde and elsewhere, the Turangalîla-symphonie is contextualized in Messiaen's oeuvre and as a genre piece. Using previously untranslated information from Messiaen's own description of the work in his Traité, close analysis of the music seeks to demystify some of the complex innovations he made to his musical language, especially in the areas of rhythm and orchestration. This Element pays special attention to the fragmentary and elusive program which is explained with reference to Messiaen's fascination with surrealism at this time. Information is included on the commission and composition of the piece, its premiere by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein, its revision by Messiaen in 1990, and its reception history in both live and recorded performances.

Aesthetics of Absence presents a significant challenge to the many embedded assumptions and hierarchical structures that have become ‘naturalised’ in western theatre production. This is the first English translation of a new collection of writings and lectures by Heiner Goebbels, the renowned German theatre director, composer and teacher. These writings map Goebbels’ engagement with ‘Aesthetics of Absence’ through his own experience at the forefront of innovative music-theatre and performance making. In this volume, Goebbels reflects on works created over a period of more than 20 years staged throughout the world; introduces some of his key artistic influences, including Robert Wilson and Jean-Luc Godard; discusses the work of his students and ex-students, the collective Rimini Protokoll; and sets out the case for a radical rethinking of theatre and performance education. He gives us a rare insight into the rehearsal process of critically acclaimed works such as Eraritjaritjaka and Stifters Dinge, explaining in meticulous detail the way he weaves an eclectic range of references from fine art, theatre, literature, politics, anthropology, contemporary and classical music, jazz and folk, into his multi-textured music-theatre compositions. As an artist who is prepared to share his research and demystify the processes through which his own works come into being, as a teacher with a coherent pedagogical strategy for educating the next generation of theatre-makers, in this volume, Goebbels brings together practice, research and scholarship.

Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in contemporary music and how they could be a solution to the field's diminishing social relevance. He focuses on two case studies, the Munich Biennale for New Music Theatre, and the Maerzmusik Festival at the Berliner Festspiele.

Considerations of thingness, intertwining transdisciplinary discourses, transcultural perspectives, and methods of practice-theory. The meaning, function, and status of things have changed decisively over the past two decades. This development can be traced back to a growing skepticism since the second half of the twentieth century that culture can be presented through things. The questioning of thingness is an integral part of presentation and has informed and shaped the social relevance of the field of the curatorial. Immanent to presentation as a mode of being (public) in the world, the curatorial has the potential to address, visualize, and question the central effects of the changing status and function of things. The presentational mode has played a generative role, vitally participating in the mobilization of things through its aesthetic, semantic, social, and, not least, economic dimensions. Intertwining transdisciplinary discourses, transcultural perspectives, and methods of practice-theory, the anthology Curatorial Things is a new orientation of the analysis of things. Contributors Arjun Appadurai, Annette Bhagwati, Beatrice von Bismarck, Bill Brown, Sabeth Buchmann, Clémentine Deliss, André Lepecki, Maria Lind, Sven Lütticken, Florian Malzacher, Benjamin Meyer-Krahmer, Sarah Pierce, Peter J. Schneemann, Jana Scholze, Kavita Singh, Lucy Steeds, Leire Vergara, Katharina Weinstock, Judith Welter

Along with twentieth-century developments in playing techniques, technologies, and concepts of musical sound, the notations employed by composers have also changed. Composers of what Umberto Eco calls 'open works' often employ intentionally ambiguous music notations. These open notations ask the performer to play a radical and active role in co-creating the musical work. Scores that feature open notations have been part of the Western classical music landscape since the mid-twentieth century, and continue to have a vibrant community of practitioners today. In this Element, Tristan McKay considers intersections of ambiguity, authority, and identity in works with open notations. He develops a semiotic approach to open notation analysis and puts it into practice with in-depth analyses of openly notated works by Earle Brown, Will Redman, and Leah Asher.

An exploration of visual culture and live performance art by the organizer of the "Six Evenings of Performance" exhibit considers the work of such contributors as Yves Klein, Gilbert & George, and others, in a study that also considers the form's pervasiveness in popular culture and politics. Reprint.

This Companion celebrates the extraordinary riches of the twentieth-century operatic repertoire in a collection of specially commissioned essays written by a distinguished team of academics, critics and practitioners. Beginning with a discussion of the century's vital inheritance from late-romantic operatic traditions in Germany and Italy, the text embraces fresh investigations into various aspects of the genre in the modern age, with a comprehensive coverage of the work of individual composers from Debussy and Schoenberg to John Adams and Harrison Birtwistle. Traditional stylistic categorizations (including symbolism, expressionism, neo-classicism and minimalism) are reassessed from new critical perspectives, and the distinctive operatic traditions of Continental and Eastern Europe, Russia and the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and United States are subjected to fresh scrutiny. The volume includes essays devoted to avant-garde music theatre, operettas and musicals, filmed opera, and ends with a discussion of the position of the genre in today's cultural marketplace.