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Nikša Gligo’s Criteria of Evaluation of New Music of the 20th Century: A retrospective

Nikša Gligo (1946), a founding member of the Croatian Association of Music Theorists, is a leading Croatian authority on 20th century music. In his 1987 book, Problems of New Music of the 20th Century: Theoretical Foundations and Criteria of Evaluation, grounded in his doctoral research, Gligo discusses the role of music theory in the 20th century, and whether it was, like Forte claimed, „once again what it has occasionally been in the past: a vital intellectual component of music“. The dispute begins with three fundamental questions: How much is theory in the nature of music at all? How much the musicality of music depends on its theory, and how much does theory condition that musicality?, and Can music without theory prove its musicality at all? He considers the role of theory at the level of communication between mediators and recipients, as a connection between ideas, notation, interpretations, works and music, taking into account both the rational (theoretical) and irrational (artistic) component of music. Namely, the necessity of theory as a means of interpretation of New Music (unlike the common-practice period music, which inherits the tradition of complete tonal consistency) does not override music’s autonomy in the part in which it interprets itself and speaks of itself. However, as much as New Music is dependent on theory because of its ambiguity and non- determination, this relationship became so complicated that the theory is no longer able to solve the problems generated by the plurality of possible interpretations, especially in the communication between the musical work and the listener, because the destabilization of the relationship between the idea, the notation and its realisation increases with the ambiguity of notation and the openness of the musical form. In spite of limited competencies of the theory of New Music, Gligo believes in the potential of applying its mediation function to the identification and formulation of specific judgement-value processes to which music is subjected, because these processes are incorporated into the music itself, which requires a shift in the understanding of its own musicality, and demands evaluation in order to prove it. In the absence of a general system of criteria that would encompass all New Music, its evaluation takes different paths, ranging from traditional evaluation criteria (notation, craft, novelty/originality/currentness, form as sense, audibility and function, all of which imply their own positive and negative manifestations), through metamusical phenomena, to the privateness and the public, activist role of all stakeholders in the communication process. Finally, Gligo closes with the questioning and definition of a free New Music, which refuses to be prescribed by canons of musicality, a „music that has never been cleaner, more unrestrained and freer than in these scarce, difficult, serious and (for her) hostile times“, whose purity, reluctance and freedom should be interpreted „as one of the rare consciences of our times“.

20th century music ; New Music ; theory ; musicality ; evaluation

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