Iris ter Schiphorst
"New..." - Excerpt from a lecture,
given in January 2011 at the Philharmonie Berlin
At festivals for 'New Music', the currency is literally 'the New'. This means that both clients/commissioners and the audience have an – unspoken – very specific expectation of a composition. Above all, it should be 'new', but 'new' in a very particular sense (because initially, every 'currently' composed piece of music is 'new' from a technical craftsmanship perspective). The 'new' intended within the New Music scene is one in the manner of 'never before seen', 'never before heard'. In other words: a 'new composition' in this sense must be 'unique' in every respect – and must distinguish itself as clearly as possible not only from formerly new, i.e., now older or old, works, but also from the multitude of other 'new compositions' for which the same expectation applies.
The 'New' is thus the number one expectation in the 'New Music scene'. Yet, naturally, the new is already old after the shortest time, so the need for the new continues incessantly. Crucially, however – and this is how the history of New Music is presented to us – the new always appears implicitly against the backdrop of a formerly new; that is, the old new is always in a certain way the basis and benchmark for the 'new new'.
Niklas Luhmann interprets this progression, this seemingly infinite process of constantly generating 'new' against the backdrop of the formerly new, as a form of obligation for continuation. Only this type of ongoing progression guarantees the unbroken continuation of New Music and simultaneously suggests its linear progress. Interestingly, 'new' compositions were not always inherently subject to this claim of the 'new' in this specific sense. This claim only gradually manifested itself with the advent of modernity and the new role of art in modern society. In this respect, the primacy of such a 'new' for a composition is not a 'law of nature', but a characteristic feature of a specific conception of art within a specific form of society.
However – as Niklas Luhmann notes elsewhere – the functional system of art must indeed allow itself to be asked where it leads if it fixates almost monomaniacally on the distinction between old and new as its most important evaluation standard (in: Schriften zur Kunst und Literatur, p. 348). Whether, however, a 'new' in this sense can exist without the 'old', i.e., without a distinction of old/new, can be doubted.
(copyright 2011, Iris ter Schiphorst)