Jonathan Kramer - PoMo music theory

 

A very interesting aspect of postmodern music theory. This will help you with your next essay.

Media Theorist Jonathan Kramer says "the idea that postmodernism is less a surface style or historical period than an attitude. Kramer goes on to say 16 "characteristics of postmodern music, by which I mean music that is understood in a postmodern manner, or that calls forth postmodern listening strategies, or that provides postmodern listening experiences, or that exhibits postmodern compositional practices."
According to Kramer (Kramer 2002, 16–17), postmodern music":

1. is not simply a repudiation of modernism or its continuation, but has aspects of both a break and an extension
2. is, on some level and in some way, ironic
3. does not respect boundaries between sonorities and procedures of the past and of the present
4. challenges barriers between 'high' and 'low' styles
5. shows disdain for the often unquestioned value of structural unity
6. questions the mutual exclusivity of elitist and populist values
7. avoids totalizing forms (e.g., does not want entire pieces to be tonal or serial or cast in a prescribed formal mold)
8. considers music not as autonomous but as relevant to cultural, social, and political contexts
9. includes quotations of or references to music of many traditions and cultures
10. considers technology not only as a way to preserve and transmit music but also as deeply implicated in the production and essence of music
11. embraces contradictions
12. distrusts binary oppositions
13. includes fragmentations and discontinuities
14. encompasses pluralism and eclecticism
15. presents multiple meanings and multiple temporalities
16. locates meaning and even structure in listeners, more than in scores, performances, or composers

Jonathan Donald Kramer (December 7, 1942, Hartford, Connecticut – June 3, 2004, New York City), was a U.S. composer and music theorist.

Active as a music theorist, Kramer published primarily on theories of musical time and postmodernism. At the time of his death he had just completed a book on postmodern music and a cello composition for the American Holocaust Museum.

Exam question - Postmodernism

Discuss why some peopleare not convinced by the idea of postmodern media.

There are many different elements which make up what postmodernism is, there isn’t just one definition to sum it up.   It is a movement of media, music, arts and other things in life that we do or see which rejects modernism.  It is the breaking down of boundaries such as genres to allow for the coming together of different things to create new meanings.  This is done in different ways and in media texts it can be done to humiliate the original pieces it has been taken from which would make it a pastiche e.g. in Family Guy’s Blue Harvest we see the coming together of a comedy Television show ‘Family Guy’ being mixed with the first ever Star Wars film ‘A New Hope’ creating a recognisable piece of media for both star wars and family guy fans who would see it and know that star wars wasn’t meant to be funny but it has now been made to look funny through telling the story with the family guy cast and characters.  This however will have people disagreeing with this kind of media with the mixing together of something which they might love, with some comedy show from the states and may cast it aside as rubbish and no good.  These people may not be convinced of the postmodernism being presented through the text as they might feel that things should be kept to their own and not tampered with as star wars was a great success and has been for many years a great classic, but it has now been brought back in the form of comedy and ruined by the family guy producers, and so they would try to ignore this kind of media. 
There is an online game called desert bus which is very postmodern in which you lay it in real time to get a bus from one destination to another in 8 hours for only one point making the game a pointless one and not worth playing.  This is what it was meant for though because games of today are played by many teenagers and adults also, where you can do many different things in different games and get for example 500 points for a kill made, or a race won etc and use these points to buy things with the money made for the game which is not real making it unrealistic, however what desert bus has done is make the game very realistic by having it in real time, ignoring the graphics which are not that great, and giving only one point.  Someone who is not convinced by this kind of postmodern media would think that the game is rubbish and pointless, which it is meant to be anyway, and say to themselves and others ‘why make the game in the first place if it is made to be pointless’ as they could maybe not understand what is trying to be put across to them and so ignore the convention of postmodernism as they either don’t want to know, or just don’t understand.
Postmodernism refers to the grand narratives in life which are religion, science and politics.  All three of these are the paths many people follow individually e.g. someone may believe only in religion and not in science or politics etc, however postmodernism takes little bits of all three of these grand narratives and uses them instead of just one of them.  From these grand narratives many people will not be convinced of postmodern media as it mixes up all three of the narratives where these people will believe in only one and so they will not want to be involved by media that is postmodern as it will be against their beliefs.
In the past e.g. the 1900’s, many people were not able to make things which were identical using just their hands and other tools with the resources available to them and so having skills and talent were very highly praised.  However when mechanisation came into existence people were able to produce identical things e.g. the same chair over and over again using machines in factories etc and therefore talent and skill was no longer something very few people had as now everyone could own the same thing.  This is where postmodernism rejects the idea as it sees the value in mixing different things together from different periods in time e.g. Dan Black’s ‘Symphonies’ where there are intertextual references from films from many different time periods and has put them all together in the video with himself in the frame of each of them.  He has done this with music as well where he has taken different bits of the song from other songs and has done this to show to the audiences that anyone can use references from different things in media and make their own remix as he has done.  It also shows that postmodernists are influenced by things from the past to create new things however they seek to take their influences from the wrong place and therefore many people won’t be convinced by their media remixes/creations.  They will again not like how things from the past have been brought to the future and mixed with other past texts as well as future texts as they may believe it destroys the meaning of the originality in the first place.

Exam Question 1

‘Digital technology turns media consumers into media producers’.  In your own experience, how has your creativity developed using digital technology to complete your coursework productions?

In my experience of producing my media products, my creativity skills have developed using the digital technologies available to me.

When creating my music video I had very little experience using a video camera besides filming things on holidays or with friends, I had never used one in a project for filming particular shots or angles and so I knew it would be challenging.  When it came to filming I was able to look at the angles wanted from the storyboard we had created and was able to apply this to the cameras positioning and have the shot and angle I wanted.  I was able to do this for all of the filming needed and when I had begun I felt as if I was getting better and better at being able to hold the camera correctly to get the right angles and shots we needed.  During the filming of the video there were some shots that I had down on the storyboard which I felt did not feel right on the camera after watching them back and so I would improvise by changing the angle slightly or the zoom on the shot so that it looked better and more significant. 

When it came to the editing of the music video the software we used was called Sony Vegas and it enabled us to do pretty much anything we wanted to the video.  We both had minimal experience of using video editing software, and so using one we had both neither used before made it even more challenging to complete the video.  However we managed to figure out the basics from messing around with it and this set us on our way with editing the video.  I was able to split the clips up and fit them together with the music by working out all of the timings etc. and as we had many shots which could fit in different places I chose the ones which looked best in each place and kept them there which I felt was being creative as I was mixing them all around to look as best as they could.  At the end of putting all of the clips together we tweaked around with the contrast and colour to give it a lonely and slightly dark feel to emphasise the feeling of being alone and trapped in the city, and doing this to the video we felt made it look a whole lot better and less of a home movie feel.