This book offers the first in-depth study of how musicians have sought to embody democracy through musical processes and relationships. Author Robert Adlington uses modern democratic theory to explore what he terms 'musical modelling of democracy' as manifested in modern and experimental music of the global North, and interrogates the contingencies and interests on which such visions of democracy are premised.

Robert Adlington is Professor of Musicology at the Royal College of Music. He is the author of books on Harrison Birtwistle, Louis Andriessen, and avant-garde music in 1960s Amsterdam, and is the editor of volumes on new music theatre, music and communism, and music and democracy.

• Acknowledgements


• List of Examples and Figures


• 1. Deciding How to Decide: The Choices for Democratic Music-making


• 2. Curating Difference: Elliott Carter and Modernist Pluralism


• 3. Admitting Interests: On the Openness of Musical Indeterminacy


• 4. Empowering Others: Audience Participation as 'Democracy in Action'


• 5. Practising Egalitarianism: Free Improvisation and the Limits to Inclusive Music-making


• 6. Ungrounded: Musical Models of Democracy in the Age of Epistemic Chaos


• Bibliography


• Index