Boundary Situations: Translation and Agency in Wolpe's Modernism

摘要

Which musics do or do not express subjectivity is a topic sometimes linked with an historiographic desire to seal off one tendency as modern, another as postmodern. In this article, the author asks in what ways can musics be interpreted or intended to question the limits of self-hood all the while they are profoundly self-expressive. Can music enact subjectivities quite alternative to, for example, Cone's model or related narratives of development and resolution? Can music open a representational space where uncertainties of subjective autonomy and aspirations toward lyrical wholeness and efficacy meet? Wolpe's song 'David's Lament over Jonathan' and two movements from Enactments illustrate Wolpe's ethic of choice and connection as a form of political engagement.