Johan Larson Lindal discusses the musical work concept and the movement of musical works through a microstudy of Ernst Krenek’s String Quartet no. 3, Op. 20, from its composition in 1923 until its reappearance in New York in 1940. The Quartet belongs to Krenek’s lesser-known works and occupies a rather narrow spot within the ‘New Music’ in the German-speaking avant-garde of its time. Its premiere was at the first International Society for Contemporary Music festival in 1923, after which it was largely forgotten by its composer. Nevertheless, it reappeared several times throughout this period in various formats and with different constellations of people, even after becoming effectively banned in Germany and Austria. These prerequisites, along with its ambiguous formal structure, makes it a compelling case.
The work of art is often discussed from a philosophical viewpoint, with proponents of, for instance, musical works as eternal abstracta or spatiotemporally situated concreta being a main focal point. Lindal instead approaches the work concept from a historical and sociological perspective, claiming that the notion of any individual musical work is based on its movement through societies and processes such as performances, publication, copyright, remediation, and circulation. Lindal draws on Actor-Network Theory and micro-history to construct a framework in which to view the work concept in relation to Op. 20 1923-1940 through the music piece’s various events, or instances in which it became relevant as an entity: for example, as text, performance, and document. He discusses which aspects of the music piece were emphasized depending on context, for example content, form, information, and relations. He thus studies the piece Op. 20 as an actor-network, always existing and transforming within networks consisting of different components, and with different degrees of unity. Studying a musical piece in this way helps us understand how artistic works were continuously fixed, re-performed, and re-defined in the early 20th century.
Johan Larson Lindal has, since 2019, been a PhD Candidate at Linköping University, Sweden: Department of Culture & Society (IKOS), division Tema Q (interdisciplinary research centre for Culture and Society). His main area of research is 20th century music history. He presented a paper at the Creative IPR Conference in February 2022 and contributed a chapter to the upcoming European Network of Avant-garde and Modernism Studies 7th book series on the theme ‘Crisis’. Before enrolling as a PhD student, he was affiliated with the Mistra Urban Futures platform in Stockholm investigating sustainable transdisciplinary co-production in the Stockholm Region.
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