The cultural work of the musical work : Light sorrow (1985), Black sun (1989)

![CDATA[This paper argues that personal experience and cultural meaning are transmitted in and through music; or, to put it another way, the musical work performs cultural work. This general proposition is tested on two composers - and one composition by each - with 'the specific aim of investigating how subjectivity is constructed in and through music. As cultural modes of discourse which extend well beyond the specific languages and techniques that each have employed, the two works in question, Light Sorrow (1985) by Georgian composer, Giya Kancheli (b. 1935), and Black Sun (1989) by Australian composer, Anne Boyd (b. 1946), are argued to transcend their cultural roots to offer similar languages of subjectivity. While an equally compelling claim could be made for the differences between these works - given that they are poles apart in their inspiration and place of making, the former emerging from the European Western art tradition and the latter imbued with the sounds of Asian music, and the composers' life exeriences and musical perspectives are seemingly more different than they are similar, as my interpretation will demonstrate - it is possible to find strong connecting points.]]