Herbert Eimert and the Darmstadt School The Consolidation of the Avant-Garde Elements in Music since 1945 Series

After 1951, the discourse surrounding both the Darmstadt courses in particular and European New Music more broadly shifted away from a dodecaphonic vocabulary in favour of concepts such as 'punctual music', 'post-Webern music', and 'static music', all collected under the newly-christened unity of the Darmstadt School. This study proposes a genealogy of the Darmstadt School through the institutional influence and writings of Herbert Eimert. It demonstrates that Eimert's understanding of music history - whereby technical procedures are universalised as the acme of historical progress - was adopted as the institutional discourse of New Music in Europe, and remains central to both textbook and critical scholarly accounts which attempt to make sense of the avant-garde after World War II.

1. Introduction; 2. After Dodecaphony: Darmstadt 1951; 3. Darmstadt, 1952; 4. Stability and its Consequences; 5. Conclusion; References.

Max Erwin is a musicologist and composer. His research is primarily focused on the European avant-garde. His writing has been published in Tempo, Music & Literature, and Revue belge de Musicologie, among others.