56 What could the substitution of the two small words, modern and contemporary – which had hitherto appeared to be interchangeable – contain that would prove so explosive? 2 All music that is temporary is contemporary. 3 In 1955, Hans Keller described the concept of ‘contemporary music’ as ‘largely illusory’. 4 His reasoning was as follows: all periods in music history have witnessed a conflict between an emerg- ing epoch and an established or ageing epoch; this conflict arises from the very fact that epochs are contemporary to each other during the period of transition; so the idea of ‘contemporary music’ at any one time is merely an empty construct marked by the politics of two epochs vying for the authority of timeliness. Keller’s examples focus on instances of non-contemporaneous intersections: J.S. Bach was considered out of date by his younger contemporaries, only to be admired later by modernists; the musical techniques associated with the development of atonal- ity and serialism can be seen in the works of Mozart; 5 and Brahms was as much a ‘contemporary’ of Schubert as he was of Schoenberg. 6 For Keller then, chronological categories tell us very little about musical developments, and the category of ‘contemporary music’ is one such category. In this type of account, the ‘contemporary’ is ineffective as a descriptive term, in that it can- not possibly encompass the extensive array of music being composed at any one time, and it is ineffective as a ‘critical yardstick’, because neither the sheer fact of newness nor public accolade (which might arguably indicate a closeness to ‘contemporary life’) are adequate measurements of value. In the absence of any real content then, the term became simply a defensive gesture on behalf of a particular style of music to which the public had grown apathetic, and about which the critical discourse was woefully inadequate: ‘The good old times fight the bad old times; and the good young times fight the bad old times; and everybody blames somebody.The only people who really profit by this state of transition are the bad composers’. 7 The problem Keller identified extends beyond his immediate era of course, and he no doubt would have been bemused to read the first issue of the Contemporary Music Review in 1984 – a 2 WHAT WAS CONTEMPORARY MUSIC? The new, the modern and the contemporary in the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) Sarah Collins 1 15031-1819d-1pass-r03.indd 56 6/15/2018 7:30:31 AM