Le « savant » et le « populaire », le postmodernisme et la mondialisation

Abstract

the music after 1945 evidences a reconciliation of “learned” and “popular” music. this
paper sheds a critical light on this reconciliation, mainly as seen from the point of view
of learned music. In a first moment (1959-70), one observes an interest of contemporary
music for the extra-European repertories (be they “learned” or “popular”). then begins
postmodernism, that carries along multiple references to all sorts of music, including the
“popular”, within learned music. Finally, at the end of the 1970’s, the rise of the question
of globalization, examined here in the light of the “national American question” and of
some European questions (national or not). Globalization is now the place of the bringing
together of the “learned” and the “popular”: this is why it is of such importance to
determine whether one is dealing with a neo-liberal globalization, of concern to
economics exclusively and not to musicology, or with that which may lead to interesting
musical results.