Musik, Ästhetik, Digitalisierung : Eine Kontroverse

In this book, world views collide. The digital revolution seems like an attack on the established music business. This is not only directed at the orchestra, but also at the study, practice, mediation, performance, and dissemination of new and old "serious" music in general. The positions represented here suggest a generational conflict between those who have grown up with the self-evident use of the computer and promise themselves a gain in freedom through quantification and acceleration, and those who see themselves committed to an emphatic concept of work and art and thus to the process of immanence of artistic production. Belief in progress in art is not a new thing. A good hundred years ago, Filippo T. Marinetti formulated his first Futurist manifesto of a new machine art. However, it was to take a hundred years before the technical possibilities also gave rise to a qualitative quantum leap. Opinions are divided on the point of "quality". Composition, musical practice and musical perception are at a crossroads. The rapid development of the digital world including its networking will not remain without consequences for musical creation. For too long, there has been silence about musical-aesthetic differences in New Music. In the present fundamental controversy, overdue and urgent questions about the future of New Music are now being posed and sometimes polemically fought out.
The controversy, which is conducted after Harry Lehmann's introductory text between Johannes Kreidler and Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, ultimately remains open-ended and will certainly give rise to follow-up discussions. With the concluding contributions, personal texts from the extended environment of the debate have been agreed upon.