One of the great challenges of writing a contemporary music history is the threat of descending into an empty taxonomy of disparate styles with no central narrative. Yet between the various music schools that emerged and matured in the late 20th century — minimalism, complexity, musique concrète instrumentale, spectralism — a common feature can be identified: a distinction between musical material and its realization as music. Building on the final chapter of Music after the Fall, this talk presents examples in recent music by a range of composers, and offers a theory of ’afterness’ as a useful place from which to start reconnecting our fragmented musical times.

Tim Rutherford-Johnson is a London-based music journalist and critic. He was the contemporary music editor at Grove Music Online and edited the most recent edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Music. He has taught at Goldsmiths College and Brunel University, and since 2003 he has written about new music for his blog, The Rambler.

He is author of ‘Music After the Fall: Modern Composition and Culture since 1989’