1989 and After
Keyword(s):
New Form
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Beginning with examples by Steve Reich, Galina Ustvolskaya, Merzbow, Hildegard Westerkamp, and Bright Sheng, this chapter introduces the diversity of composition being produced at the end of the 1980s and explains the need for a new form of music history that can reflect and organize that variety. It provides a rationale for 1989 as a starting point for that history and describes six main developments in society, culture, and technology that have enabled and inspired developments in Western art music since then: social liberalization, globalization, digitization, the Internet, late capitalist economics, and the green movement.