Music and the Modern Condition: Investigating the Boundaries

Ilic (musicology, UCLA) looks at the birth and decline of modernity in classical music in the context of social, literary and artistic movements at the turn of the sixteenth century compared to the turn of the twentieth century. She sees the former as part of a reformation of artistic authenticity and individualism enveloped in the religious Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Composers included Monteverdi, Grandi and, at the end, Mozart. The revolution of the twentieth century saw the atonal works of Schoenberg, Stackhausen and Boulez, among others. Ilic feels that these works echo each other in their sense of a world cast adrift. This slim, but dense, study should inspire discussion among postmodernists. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Ljubica Ilic holds degrees from the University of Arts in Belgrade (BA in musicology) and University of California, Los Angeles (MA and PhD in musicology), where she was a Chancellor's fellow Ilic was an Ahmanson-Getty Postdoctoral Fellow (2007-2008), and a visiting professor in the department of musicology at UCLA (2008-2009).