Death of the Author - A Tribute

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The strong devotion to musical quotation that arose in the latter half of the twentieth century has elicited increased research in the area of musical borrowing as a field of study, leading composers and theorists to eventually acknowledge musical borrowing as a distinct movement in postmodern music. With the rise of this artistic movement, however, also came the death of the author as creator of new meaning. This book presents the set of Homages for piano solo by Canadian composer Jack Behrens as an illustration of the ways in which a composer can still assert his musical identity in the postmodern age. Behrens’s innovative approach to overt quotation is explored in four essays, which discuss his unique methods of bringing past masterpieces into contemporary musical practice by writing works that absorb entire pre-existing compositions. The book provides a view of overt quotation in the context of an age marked by technological and sociological changes, and should be especially useful to artists seeking to understand the new and diverse uses of postmodern quotation as a result of the industrial era and of the advances of mechanically-reproductive media.