Beyond the Crisis of the Avant-garde in Music: The Potentials of Wolfgang Welsch's Concept of Transculturality in Musicological Studies

Abstract

Point of departure in this paper is the notion of the avant-garde in music as viewed by Serbian musicologist Mirjana Veselinović Hofman, with focus on her concept of local avant-garde, compared to the concept of transculturality developed by German philosopher, aesthetician, and theorist of culture Wolfgang Welsch. Together, these concepts put the idea of the avant-garde in music in a different perspective, especially concerning the place and time of its emergence. Inspired by those two concepts, the status of avant-garde, radical music today is further investigated, using the insights in contemporary music by Adornian music aesthetician Max Paddison.