Modernism is key to Western art music yet remains poorly understood. This book offers new perspectives on transformations in recent composition, performance and musical thought. It recasts modernism as a whole, revealing both its connections to tradition and its contemporary vitality.

Introduction Julian Johnson and Erling E. Guldbrandsen; Part I. Rethinking Modernism: 1. The lure of the sublime: revisiting the modernist project Susan McClary; 2. Return of the repressed: particularity in early and late modernism Julian Johnson; 3. Expressionism revisited: modernism beyond the twentieth century Arnold Whittall; 4. Erik Bergman, cosmopolitanism and the transformation of musical geography Bjoern Heile; 5. Sharing a stage: the growing proximity between modernism and popular music David Metzer; Part II. Rewriting Modernism: 6. Ritual and Eros in James Dillon's Come live with me Michael Cherlin; 7. Montage in modernity: scattered fragments, dynamic fragments Jean-Paul Olive; 8. Transformations of appearance: suddenness and the modernist fragment Marion Hestholm; 9. Rethinking Boulez: schemes, logics and paradigms of musical modernity Edward Campbell; 10. Remembrance and prognosis in the music of Gyoergy Ligeti Peter Edwards; 11. Valentin Silvestrov and the symphonic monument in ruins Samuel Wilson; Part III. Replaying Modernism: 12. Playing with transformations: Boulez's Improvisation III sur Mallarme Erling E. Guldbrandsen; 13. Performance as critique Arnulf Christian Mattes; 14. 'Unwrapping' the voice: Cathy Berberian and John Cage's Aria Francesca Placanica; 15. Radically idiomatic instrumental practice in works by Brian Ferneyhough Anders Forisdal; 16. The ethics of performance practice in complex music after 1945 Tanja Orning.