Joakim Tillman - Svenska samfundet för musikforskning

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Joakim Tillman
ship to the audience and musicians, intuitive versus ‘constructivist’ compositional
processes.
In the second part, three critical commentaries on Sandström’s reaction against
modernism are contrasted with the composer’s own views. The discussion touches
on subjects like affirmative versus negative music, imitation and plagiarism versus
‘real’ progressive composition, manipulation of the audience versus using music as a
negative mirror of society, and concepts like irony, camp, and neoavantgarde.
The concluding part of the article relates Sandström’s ideas and music after his
break with modernism to some issues raised in the international debates on art music
and postmodernism. For example, is his music antimodern or postmodern, and if it
is postmodern, is it an instance of traditional or radical postmodernism? My conclusion,
using Jonathan D. Kramer’s criterion of unity versus disunity, is that his music
from 1979–87 tends towards traditional postmodernism and the music from 1988
and later towards radical postmodernism, even though the works from the former
period are more pluralistic.