Lena Dražić, Die Politik des Kritischen Komponierens. Diskursive Verflechtungen um Helmut Lachenmann [The Politics of Critical Composing. Discursive Entwinements Around Helmut Lachenmann], mdw Press, Vienna 2024.
The fact that Helmut Lachenmann now occupies an outstanding position in the contemporary music scene is owed not just to his compositions but also to the efficacy of his writings, which have stimulated the production of a considerable number of texts referring thereto. It is these writings and the discourses revolving around them that concern the author, here, with special attention being paid to those parts of the overall picture that have to do with the tendency of “critical composing”. The critical aspect pertains “to the treatment of the musical material and to the respective sociocultural conditions that apply to music production and to music reception.” The names with which this compositional tendency is associated are above all Adorno, Nono, Lachenmann, N. A. Huber, Spahlinger, and Mahnkopf—which points to a period of approximately one century as a longitudinal section where the associated strain of discourse is concerned. Lena Dražić, however, goes farther by quite rightly pointing out how this discourse is deeply rooted in the (German) 19th century. One thinks of German idealism, of heroic historical narratives and canon formation as expressions of bourgeois aesthetics and morality, and of an emphatic notion of the work linked with the concept of absolute/autonomous music. The German musicological tradition that arose in parallel with all this, building upon it while being consciously or unconsciously steered not least by nationalist ideologies, constructed a narrative oriented toward hegemony that always also led to the devaluation or marginalisation of whatever did not correspond thereto.
While more than a few scholarly works in this area take up a conspicuously approving stance or a critical and disapproving one, Dražić’s portrayal is by no means tendentious but much rather characterised by a broad horizon and supported with a quite convincingly wielded theoretical toolbox (including discourse analysis concepts, context analysis, and models for describing social units). In her approach, she assumes a broad notion of politics that includes all forms of negotiating power-related processes. As an analytical category, the notion of politics is therefore employed not only in connection with explicit political questions but also “to examine the intention of societal efficacy tied to the practice of critical composing” and the implicit, oft-unscrutinised “socio-theoretical assumptions of the protagonists.” In short: a highly recommendable book!
