Postmodernism and Musical Analysis: mutually exclusive terms?
Lateral Shifts in Music History. Is pop music the latest such shift?

What does conventional musical analysis tell us about a piece of music? What does it not tell us about that work? What can conventional musical analysis tell us about a work whose aesthetic and creative centre of gravity lies outside the work itself? Are there are analytical methods which may be more effective in yielding results for contemporary music (ex. semiotics)? What kind of information does  Set Theory provides us with and how do the findings of such an analysis aids us to ascribe artistic value to the work in question?

Difference between visual and aural analysis of a piece of music. Is it a difference of degree or of kind? Has modernist composition particularly in the middle decades of the twentieth century been a process of "reverse analysis"? Has the music score in some cases become an end in itself, rather than a means to an end?

Is collage just a means of surface organization or is it possible to use collage as an in-depth structural means? Can  new, more complex musical meaning result from superimposing multiple existing semantic layers, each of which is consistent within itself (horizontal meaning) while relating to one another through a complex web of inferences (vertical meaning)? Is this "meta-semantics" or language game an augmentation, or transposition of the melodic (horizontal) / harmonic (vertical) duality in classical counterpoint? Can one detect consistencies in the relationships between horizontal and vertical meaning in contemporary music that may be analogous to the classic rules of counterpoint? If yes, are we heading towards a new—but considerably more complex and rich—common practice analogous to the common practice era of western European music? If yes, is pop music (in its more augmented sense that does not only include commercial top 40 hits) the new playing field for composition? Is there any raison d' etre at all for segregating "classical" and "pop" music at this stage of their development? "Roxane" from Moulin Rouge: is this work complex enough to rival the complexity of a contemporary "classical" composition?

How does the question of legitimation apply in the arts and music in particular? How do Arts Councils and other sources of non-profit funding deal with the question of legitimation in their funding priorities? Are stylistic and  genre segregation reactionary attempts to stem off unavoidable questions of artistic legitimation? How do the various language games that aim at the legitimation of segregated genres within society at large square off with the ultimate democratic principle of majority rule? In a climate dominated by relativity of value, does musical value have any authority outside the circle of he language game players? Does postmodernity ultimately sabotages Value as a concept?

Listening (or reserve at the Faculty of Music Library):

Marius DeVries / Baz Luhrmann: Moulin Rouge. CD on reserve at the library.

Glenn Buhr: Winter Poems. Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Bramwell Tovey, conductor. CBC Records.  CD on reserve at the library.

Bjork: Selmasongs (Soundtrack from "Dancer in the Dark"). CD on reserve at the library.