Сontemporary music in the aspect of the musical education interest

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to specify the concept of contemporary music, which has become today widely used in oral and literary pedagogical practice. The concepts of new music and modern music are also discussed. The etymological, contextual-historical and aesthetic meanings of these categories are clarified. It has been established that all the given verbal expressions are ambiguous and unclear in their semantic boundaries. The authors came to the conclusion that the following interpretations of the studied terminological expression are relatively clear and justified from the point of view of the interests of music education: 1) Contemporary music is music that can satisfy the current cultural requirements of society (in particular aesthetic, ideological, religious aspirations and sentiments); 2) Contemporary music is a mass of products of popular culture, which are influenced by fleeting fashion, meet undemanding aesthetic tastes. Regardless of their artistic merits at any “moment” of historical time they function as relevant works of art; 3) Contemporary music in special historical sense is the works of European composers created within the chronological boundaries of the last quarter of the 19th century – the third quarter of the 20th century. This meaning of the concept is also conveyed by the terminological expressions “new music”, “modern music”, “modernist music”, which are accepted in the Western literary tradition. These expressions reflect ideas about fundamental changes in European composer music of this period, which affected: a) the quality of sound material, b) the organization of musical language (intonation structure, meter rhythm, tonal principles), composition technique, style, typical properties of art-image semantic and artistic functions of music in the cultural system. 4) Contemporary music can be interpreted as a relative concept associated with the principle of the historical development of musical art. At any stage of the art development, two oppositely directed trends appear: a) a tendency towards renewal (modernist trend) and b) a tendency towards preservation (conservative trend). In this sense, concepts contemporary music and modern music” are associated with the modernist trend. Modernism in this context is interpreted as a universal category, reflecting the conscious, open and radically formed desire of the authors to update the system of means of artistic expression and the semantics of musical art. The authors suggest that the last of the given interpretations of the concept of “modern music” is of the greatest theoretical and methodological interest for the music education system.