Tim Rutherford-Johnson New Spaces, New Times: New Music since 1973

The last fifty years have likely been some of the most creatively rich and diverse in musical history. There are many reasons for this: an expansion and increase in institutions and organisations (including the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation) devoted to music’s funding and creation; the rapid growth of the recording industry; the proliferation and cross-pollination of musical genres; the gradual (yet still incomplete) entry of artists of all ethnicities, genders and social classes into the concert hall; and the spread of aesthetics, technology and teaching around the world thanks to study grants, mass and online media, and affordable international travel. Rather than attempt – inadequately – to describe that diversity, this essay will take a partial approach. Its guide will be Manuel Castells’ seminal book The Information Age, and particularly its first volume, The Rise of the Network Society. 1 This is for three reasons. First, Castells’ analysis covers the period from the early 1970s to the turn of the millennium, and so conveniently overlaps with our period of study. Second, Castells’ focus is the intersection between the birth and widespread adoption of information technology and the globalisation of the world economy, two forces that – I have argued elsewhere 2 – have been significant in shaping the music of recent years. And third, and most important, the structural changes that Castells identifies as characteristic of the Information Age are ones that we can see mirrored in the music of the same period. Using selected examples, this essay will point to some of the ways in which those social changes were reflected in the music that accompanied them.

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