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Between the late 1950s and the present day a key shift has occurred in the cultural significance of musical endeavour. At some point in this period the primacy of the avant-garde was ended and supplanted by a culture of postmodernity. If anything, when viewed within a broader cultural framework, the rise of notions of a culture of postmodernity is directly related to the decline of the avant-garde. Indeed, I will suggest that the is in fact a key marker of the other. Central to this discussion are the views of the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. Bauman is often marginalised in discussions of the nature of postmodernity, in the same way that many of the more well-known key texts on postmodernism, postmodernity and post-structuralism neglect this moment of passage in favour of binary oppositional play between modernism and postmodernism, or examinations of the condition of postmodernity with only negligible reference to its forebear. What is key to Bauman's writings on the nature of contemporary society, however, is precisely this diffuse area of liminality situated between modernity and postmodernity. Thus, though the shift from the one true church of an avant-garde will be starkly contrasted with the ecumenicalism of postmodernity, I hope to avoid the wellworn cliche of integral pluralism as representing a style. I shall focus instead upon the integration of compositional modes of thinking and the culture that surrounds them. In what follows, I shall primarily be considering modernity and postmodernity as if they were temporal strata rather than musical styles or, indeed, more clearly defined historical periods, following Taylor's salutary example in endeavouring to sidestep the inevitable dead end that results when attempting to determine whether or not a particular piece or composer is postmodern. It is therefore important to understand how might attempt to characterise a postmodern music. Or, more accurately, how thinking about the composition of new music might exist within a postmodern space. It is also, first, vital to explain why the tendency to use the idea of postmodernism as a genre category must be avoided.
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