The Day the Music Died : Searching for New Practices of Sharing in the Aftermath of the Death of a Composer in Western Art Music

Abstract

In January 2016 news reported the death of Pierre Boulez. He was a major figure in contemporary Western art music from the 1950s onwards in varied roles as conductor, writer, and influential cultural figure in addition to being a composer. There was a shared sentiment amongst friends and colleagues working in Western art music that the twentieth century was truly over with his death. Boulez was ninety and had been ill for some time, and his death was inevitable; but the most striking fact was that it took more than fifteen years for many of us to gain a sense with certainty that twentieth-century music had gone. Six years on from his death, we may ask: what does the death of a composer signify as a concrete event within a span of time, for a cultural practice such as the performance of contemporary Western art music? This question provides the starting point for looking closely into the subtly changing ways in which musicians and audience share the music in the aftermath of the death of a composer.