Maceda, Spahlinger and the Dialectics of a “New Music” Praxis in Southeast Asian Modernity

This book transcends personal encounters to construct an analytic framework for new music composition based on the Hegelian principle of sublation. Its main focus, Music for Gongs and Bamboo (1997) by Filipino composer José Maceda (1917-2004) and Gegen Unendlich (1995) by German composer Mathias Spahlinger (b. 1944), deliberately poses unique challenges to the European traditional Gestalt of harmonic practice. This book will show the ramifications to musical material and the structures of cancellation in both works, having the principle of Hegelian sublation as its main theoretical bent. The analytic framework and the careful selection of pieces featured allow the discussions to cover grounds such as mode of production, site of production, and the acquisition of an exchange value in the category known as "new music."

The book is an analytical work in the domains of aesthetics, music philosophy, and comparative musicology. It is the first such work that looks both inside and outside its regional (Southeast Asian) setting, immersed in modernity and a global political economy.

Published in 2022 by University of the Philippines Press

116 pages / Paperback