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Chronicle of the NonPop Revolution
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For the last fifty years, the term "Avantgarde" has enjoyed a hitherto unusually frequent usage in parts of the world. It was decided to systematically investigate the phenomenen of "avantgardicity" as applied to the artistic produce of a given chronogeographical region and to find out the underlying criteria, if any. This paper is a condensed report on the results obtained.
Initial research suggested that the parameters relevant to the evaluation of avantgardicity are in the main sociosophical and physiofiscal. At the present time, most authorities are agreed on the constitution of the latter type, only grudgingly admitting the former, of which one parameter, here called "quality" and formerly widely applied, has in more recent times been held to be ethicomythical and thus undebatable. This parameter seems to the present writer to be nonetheless indispensible and indeed it will be shewn why, when and by whom its relevance has been questioned.
As a prerequisite to the application of this parameter my co-researchers and I found it expedient to break it down as a working hypothesis into three attributes: mastery, originality and integrity. According to the dictionary,
To each of these attributes an evaluation scale ranging from zero to five was allocated; the product of the three empirically determined values was found to render a reasonable estimate of the quality involved. For instance the 1975 novel Ethnic Trapeze by the author Plutos Plutophilos manifested high originality (4.2), middling mastery (3.1) and low integrity (1.8); the product 4.2x3.1x1.8 = 23.436 revealed a low overall quality rating. By contrast, the Third Symphomanic Ode by the 19th Century composer Ton Vanderliefde revealed via an originality of 4.7, a mastery of 4.8 and an integrity of 4.4 a quality level of 99.264, just missing the threshold 100, above which the descriptor "great" and the title "masterwork" becomes applicable. In tests, the maximum attainable value 125 (=5x5x5) was never reached though many of the cases analyzed came close.
This chapter reports briefly on the application of this "MOI" test (named after the three attributes) by an appointed jury to a large body of music works, 8237 in number, chosen according to the following three criteria they were
Click image for detailed view
Fig.l exhibits four surprisingly distinct diagonal bands, outlined by separating lines. The lowest, corresponding to the generation of composers born between 1918-32 is fairly dark at bottom left, indicating high values for originality and integrity in their twenties, gradually gaining in mastery in their forties and losing somewhat in all three attributes in later life. The next band, that of composers born from 1933-47 shows a similar development, though a little less distinct; this band ends at the top at the fifties and early sixties age group with a quality rating a bit higher that that of their contemporary predecessors. The third band, of composers born from 1948-62, differs startlingly in shade from the lower two - all attribute values are seen here to reach the diagramme's minimum, especially those of integrity (vertical lines). The fourth band, the very slightly darker triangle at top left, corresponds to composers born from 1963-77, not extending beyond the age of thirty-five.
We here attempt, somewhat daringly, to explain the clear definition of these four bands in the light of a psychosocial examination of the different conditions in which the four named composer generations worked:
The military defeat in 1945 of reactionary forces in the said region E who had effectively sought to repress original artistic activity, led to the arisal of the first generation (b.'18-32) of composers, who combined boldly innovative (high integrity value!) with original, previously suppressed ideas. Supported (in the name of cultural restitution) in the realisation of their visions, this generation rose to immediate fame, in the shadow of which the second generation (b.'33-47) was to grow up - this generation was eased through direct personal contact with their dominant predecessors (and indeed many of the former served as assistants of the latter) into a contrasting degree of modesty, however without having a significant effect on their quality. The third generation (b.'48-62), personally witnessing the public grandeur (and relative fiscal security) of the first and the modest nature of the second, opted to imitate the former of the two in the hope of acquiring a degree of fame and wealth. However, since this motivation lay more in a socioeconomic than an artistic field, quality was here of understandably peripheral relevance and consequentially of significantly lower value. Furthermore (as reported by the present writer elsewhere in this book), the first generation had in the meantime shifted its main interest from innovation to the cultivation and extension of its accumulated wealth, supported in this by the biologically still extant restitutional cultural authorities, whose pristine efforts to comprehend the new thinking had exhausted most of their creative energy and closed them to further innovation. The third generation could optimally profit in its artistic irrelevance from this fact. The second generation, daunted by these developments, had sought fiscal shelter in academic institutions (preferring the sale of their knowledge to that of their works), thus enabling a sporadically creative dialogue with the fourth generation (b.'63-77).
This fourth generation - for whom the current developments of the first generation (whose initial splendour had for them either already faded or remained unperceived) were unimpressive, for whom the second generation played more of an advisory than a exemplary role, for whom the third generation in its unsuccessful attempt to abolish the relevance of quality had only led to boredom and chagrin - embarked on a search for new ways of approaching the issue of the continuance of culturally relevant work in an evidently elitist field, traditionally ignored, at best rejected by the broad masses. This questioning approach seems to have caused, as far as the said fourth generation is concerned, a slight increase in the originality and integrity values. Due to its relatively low age at the time of this report, it could be expected that its mastery values, traditionally peaking in the forties age-group (see below), will increase as time goes on.
To end this paper, Fig.2 shows the three attributes as empirical functions of age and year of birth or composition as extracted from Fig.l.
Click image for detailed view