ABOUT THIS BOOK

The first book-length study in English of composer Mathias Spahlinger, one of Germany’s leading practitioners of contemporary music.

One of the most stimulating and provocative figures of the new music scene, Mathias Spahlinger has long been a touchstone for leftist, “critical” composition in Germany, yet his work has received very little attention in Anglophone scholarship until now.

Spahlinger’s practice offers a unique negotiation of the modernist legacy as well as passionate political and philosophical engagement. Born in 1944, today his position as one of the most venerable exponents of post-WWII modernism in his homeland is undeniable: his music is regularly performed, he has received commissions from many of the major orchestras and new music groups in Germany, and in 2014 he received the Berliner Kunstpreis, Berlin’s top art prize.

Bringing a critical perspective to Spahlinger’s life and work, this monograph provides an essential reference for scholars of new music and twentieth-century modernism.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Neil Thomas Smith is a composer and postdoctoral researcher at the Maastricht Centre for the Innovation of Classical Music in the Netherlands. He lives in Edinburgh. Martin Iddon is a musicologist and composer and lecturer at the University of Leeds. His articles have been published in Musical Quarterly, Twentieth-Century Music, and Contemporary Music Review.

REVIEWS

While on the one hand, Neil Thomas Smith succeeds in filling up a void in academic literature on Spahlinger in English, his writing exceeds that purpose by bringing Spahlinger’s work into a general cultural and political context.[...] What is perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Smith’s book is the detailed analysis of many notable works of Spahlinger, which generations of composers will find very useful after listening to the music. On the whole therefore, this very enlightening book illustrates how one of the most influential composers at the dawn of the 21st century put thought and sound into the wholeness of his unique works that continue to intrigue the global artistic community.

— Jonas Baes, Popular Music

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Part 1

Modernism Underestimated
Biography and Context: Spahlinger and Twentieth-Century Germany

Part 2

Musique Concrète Instrumentale
Order
Open Form
Perception

Conclusion

Mathias Spahlinger: List of Works