Buchpräsentation: Postmodernismus und Musiksemantik, Dr. Gregor Pompe

Biography
Gregor Pompe first studied comparative literature and German at the Ljubljana Faculty of Arts and then turned to studies in musicology, receiving the Student Prešeren Prize of the Faculty of Arts for his graduation thesis. He lectures at the Musicology Department of the Ljubljana Faculty of Arts, where he defended his doctoral dissertation in 2006. He has also lectured in music history at the Music Department of the Faculty of Education at the University of Maribor, and has led a seminar at the Musicology Department of the Faculty of Humanities at the Karl Franz University in Graz.

His research areas are contemporary music and questions regarding the semantics of music and music theatre. He has received the Mantuani Award of the Slovene Musicology Society for his professional work, and has been recognised by the Faculty of Arts and the Student Council of the Faculty of Arts for his successful pedagogical work. Gregor Pompe is also active as a publicist, music critic and composer, and since 2009 has been the president of the Slovene Musicology Society.

About the Monograph
In the monograph, the author links two central conceptions of contemporary musical practice: postmodernism and semiotics. There is a systematic treatment of the concept of postmodernism as a specialised musical term linked to the semantic aspect of the music analysed. The author attempts to reach his own view of the postmodern and of postmodern music, which he defines with the aid of concepts from semantics and the semiotics of music. Postmodernism appears to offer an exit from the hermeticism of modernism, which dominated music in the decades following the Second World War. The author points out, however, that this “exit” is not simply a case of taking on models from the past; a postmodern stance is not possible without clear experience and knowledge of modernism. He views the main characteristic of postmodern music as the increased and specific narrative of the musical flow, which is derived from the collage of various stylistic combinations, palimpsest, collage, quotations, short circuits and other related artistic techniques. The author also offers a survey of various semiotic/semantic analytical approaches to music.

The book provides an overview of the idea of musical postmodernism in general, with particular emphasis on musical postmodernism in Slovenia, which the author conveys to the new typology of postmodernism. Of particular value is the analysis of four works by established figures in contemporary music - George Crumb, Alfred Schnittke, Peter Ruzicka and Lojze Lebič - in which the author thoroughly demonstrates the characteristics of creativity in contemporary music. The monograph also includes a list of authors who together practically represent an “orientation” through contemporary musical creativity and theoretical thought.