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New criticism shifts attention from the author of a work to the work itself. It treats a literary text (any text, but usually a poem) as a freestanding entity with its own style and structure. Close attention to these factors—employing such techniques as statistical analysis—will elucidate its ‘meaning’, but considerations of its place in its author\'s output, or even its relationship to other works of the same period or kind, are quite secondary. The notion of the critic-as-connoisseur is replaced by that of the critic-as-scientist: a bracing and still not universally accepted trend.
In music, similar techniques of analysis and deconstruction are used to give a quasi-objective analysis of how a composition ‘works’. The trend began with the rigorous elucidation of the mathematical structures underlying serial music, but the methods have since begun to be applied to music of all periods and kinds, from medieval motets to gamelan, from Mozart\'s melodic structures to heavy metal. As with new criticism in literature, the movement in music is largely confined to universities, and has had little impact on the art at large. KMcL
See also criticism. |
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