Collage as the Principle of Mythological Thinking and Postmodern Music

The term neo-mythologism can be used as an interpretative approach to reflect the new 20th-century music paradigm, which helps to explain changes in the understanding of basic structural elements of myth and music. The study identifies certain possible correlations between mythological thinking and music by analysing the concept of collage (bricolage). The underlying theoretical concept employed is Claude Levi-Strauss' structural anthropology as proposed in La Pensee Sauvage (1962). Collage is viewed as a manifestation of neo-mythologism and as a narrative in the postmodern musical discourse, which is accompanied by changes in the understanding of the essence of the musical matter and compositional techniques of composers. The compositional treatment of several different layers of the musical structure within a musical collage with a view to conveying a new meaning is in principle akin to how meaning is generated in mythological thinking through the combination of various materials.