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En studie kring Sven-David Sandströms reaktion mot modernismen

Abstract

This article discusses the Swedish composer Sven-David Sandström’s (b. 1942) reaction against modernism between the late 1970’s and the early 90’s. The first part of the article focuses on his change of ideas concerning issues like progress, aesthetic prohibitions, stylistic pluralism, quotation technique, return to tradition, relation- 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.