The paradoxical work of the Self in contemporary music

In the 1940s and 1950s, after the discovery of the gas chambers and the extent of man’s inhumanity to man, musical language underwent a profound transformation, abandoning the human ear as a unit of measurement. Composers explored different raw materials and forms, derived from their new awareness of noise, long rejected as the shadow. The composite character of the works which integrate the shadow sounds suggests the paradoxical union of opposites expressed by the mandala.