Main trends in composer and popular entertainment post-modern music in the context of the contemporary anthropic crisis

In the conditions of modern civilization, when humanity is facing the threat, on the one hand, of physical extinction, either as a result of a man-made or nuclear catastrophe, or as a result of biogenetic self-destruction, on the other - of moral devastation and spiritual and value degradation, the problem arises of overcoming the crisis of anthropism and a significant transformation of human nature. The state of modern musical culture is a characteristic of man and his culture, an anthropic crisis that characterizes the modern stage of human existence. This article is devoted to the philosophical and aesthetic analysis of the manifestations of crisis phenomena in compositional and popular mass music. The crisis of anthropism generates a different composer’s music, it becomes an open space for sound experiments with ready-made texts and quotations, with forms and structural elements of the musical language. The modern space of professional music is either a continuation of academic classical schools, reproduction of what was already created earlier, or experiments with sound, with music reproduction and presentation technologies, very often for an elite circle of people who are passionate about such activities. Analyzing the modern musical space of opus music, it can be argued that music in the postmodern period increasingly enters the field of spatiality and technology, with an almost complete dissolution of the author and listener. This is a manifestation of the crisis of anthropism in compositional music, in fact, it is a subjective-existential crisis, the “end of the time of composers” in musical culture. The shocking impact of composer’s experimental music on the mass audience has rapidly expanded the audience of popular music. The anthropological and aesthetic characteristics of modern popular entertainment music are associated with certain image trends. From jazz and rock’n’roll to disco and techno music, the image worldview is primarily aimed at commercial success. The anthropic crisis in popular music culture is characterized primarily by the utilitarianism of mass music and its consumerist nature. On the other hand, it can be noted that mass musical culture exploits new technical and artistic means born of modern types of mass communication. The multiplicity of effects of various means of communication on the psychophysiology of personality also changes the mechanisms of human perception of the surrounding reality. The mosaic nature and fragmentation of human thinking is expressed in the creation of similar technologies in musical art and culture in general: montage dramaturgy, collage, agglutination, holography. Modern man has long stopped thinking about the spiritual foundations of his existence. Thus, modern musical culture, polarizing from elitist intellectual opuses to popular entertainment music and mass culture products, generates a paradoxical situation of understanding the space of human existence, the meanings of human existence, which deserves close study by both cultural philosophers, aestheticians, and art historians. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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