Polystyle
The term polystilistics describes a certain way of composing within New Music , which gained in importance especially in the course of postmodernism . This technique is about combining different styles of music in one piece . These genre interventions can either be placed next to one another or overlap one another. The respective styles are often imitated, but pure or modified quotations can also be used. Depending on the composition, the old material has a completely new effect. The immediate historical forerunners are BA Zimmermann's opera The Soldiers (1965) and Berio's “Sinfonia” (1968–1969).
The main representative of this technique is Alfred Schnittke , who also saw it as a countermovement to serial music . In polystylism, Schnittke also saw "[the conscious] playing out of style differences, which creates a new musical space and again enables dynamic design." He also ascribes a spatial effect, a multidimensionality, and beyond that, a piece of everyday reality to polystylism. because many hearing impressions from various genres mix with one another in everyday life. In his first symphony (1972–1974), Schnittke uses this compositional technique, according to his own statement, to revive the old and depraved classical form of the four-movement symphony by collecting leftovers and filling gaps with new material.
As a means of composition in this sense, but not under the term polystilistics, such multilayered material can be found with historical recourse, especially in the composers of the so-called " New Simplicity ", for example in Wolfgang Rihm's intuitively guided subjectivism , and independently of these in Friedrich Goldmann , who from 1969 (sonata for wind quintet and piano; symphony No. 1) “bursts open from the inside” with new sound material, making the breaks between the separate levels usable as a compositional means.
Polystylistic borrowings can also be found in Kalevi Aho , Robert Graettinger , Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen , Jaan Rääts and Arif Mirsojew .
literature
- Ulrich Dibelius : Modern Music after 1945 . Piper, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-492-04037-3 , pp. 552 ff .