How can we speak about new music without either simplifying it or hiding it behind specialist language? What remains of the aesthetic battles around Darmstadt, serialism and the avant-garde? What can Cage, Wolff, Stockhausen, Feldman or Kagel still tell us today? And what happens to music when the political, technological and ecological conditions in which it is made begin to change?
Christopher Fox approaches these questions from inside musical life. He writes as a composer, performer, listener and participant in a culture that he has observed and helped to shape for more than four decades.
Speaking Clearly moves through the history of new and experimental music since the Second World War while also tracing Fox's own musical biography. His essays combine close musical observation with personal experience, historical awareness, curiosity and a persistent willingness to disagree.
For this volume Fox has returned to his earlier writings, revised them and added new commentaries. The result is an unusual dialogue between past and present: earlier convictions meet later experience, while historical debates open onto contemporary questions about cultural politics, sustainability, institutions and the social significance of art.
A book about music - and about why music remains something worth arguing about.