Herbert Eimert and the Darmstadt School

After 1951 the discourse surrounding both the Darmstadt courses in particular and European New Music more broadly shifted away from a dodecaphonic vocabulary in favour of concepts such as ''punctual music'' ''post-Webern music'' and ''static music'' all collected under the newly-christened unity of the Darmstadt School. This study proposes a genealogy of the Darmstadt School through the institutional influence and writings of Herbert Eimert. It demonstrates that Eimert''s understanding of music history - whereby technical procedures are universalised as the acme of historical progress - was adopted as the institutional discourse of New Music in Europe and remains central to both textbook and critical scholarly accounts which attempt to make sense of the avant-garde after World War II.