Introduction

Critical writings on issues of philosophical, cultural, and aesthetic postmodernism have played a prominent if not dominant role in a wide variety of humanistic disciplines during the last twenty years. Occasionally, this “postmodern debate” has migrated into the domains of the natural and mathematical sciences, raising questions about the foundations of scientific explanation. The debate has been vital, contentious, and nearly ubiquitous in a wide variety of disciplinary discussions. Within the domain of musical studies, issues of postmodernism have trickled into the discourse with little sustained discussion about how the term might apply and to what kinds of musical phenomena it might refer. Of the writing that has occurred, three types may be discerned: English-language writing about popular music, German-language writing about concert music, and English-language writing about concert music.