Contemporary Music

Big challenge; define contemporary music.

Music written by our contemporaries.

Where to draw the border is tricky, as always. But surely there is now a difference between modern and contemporary music. Surely Prokofiev isn't a contemporary composer. He has been dead for more than 50 years.

If they died more than 20 years ago they aren't contemporary to me. Of course that has something to do with my age. If I would be 60 I may have said 30 or 40.

If they are still alive I am sure it is pretty clear. But a composer like Sorabji, who died 1988. I am not sure.

Some people use '20th century music' and '21th century music (aka contemporary)'. That is pretty clear. But that makes contemporary a pretty small space, which explains why they call it 21th century. Surely a work composed in 1999 is just as contemporary as a work written in 2002. So maybe contemporary is somewhere inbetween.

I think I would prefer:

Modern 1910-1980

Contemporary 1981-present

But maybe 1970 or 1990 instead of 1980. Doesn't really matter that much. Rachmaninoff was still writing romantic music after 1910 for example. But from a technical perspective there is no real difference between modern and contemporary music. Maybe that it is now allowed not to be experimental, reactionist, inventive, etc.

So the music of Philip Glass is contemporary yet the music of Shostakovich is not? Glass wrote music while Shostakovich was still alive: what makes the difference between the early music of Glass (which is apparently contemporary) and the music of Shostakovich (which is apparently not contemporary). Glass is the contemporary composer: he is contemporary to me. Shostakovich is not, as he is not and was not contemporary to me. Yet of two pieces written in the 1970's, how so is one a piece of contemporary music and the other not?

For me, the border is not difficult to draw. We are basically talking of three things:

1) Contemporary Composers : alive now or within my own lifetime.

2) Contemporary Composition : a piece written within within my own lifetime

3) Contemporary Music : Music that is being performed in the present tense. If I go to hear a piece of music played live then it is contemporary music. If it's Beethoven or Glass or Shostakovich or Sakamoto, it's contemporary music. Note that recorded music is not contemporary as it is an historical document.

The term 'contemporary' is so very personal I think there are many 'correct' ways of using the term. I wonder if my thoughts are to be found interesting...