Richard Pennycuick on post-modernism:

>...  I keep seeing the word used as if it's taken for granted that
>everybody knows what it means.  I once spent some time on the web in
>search of an explanation until I admitted defeat.  Enlightenment, someone,
>please!

The expression should refer to a bunch of (historically; & philosophically)
post Modernist schools which sidebar the limitations of Modernism by co-opt
pre-existing (often popular) devices into new aesthetics forms.  It is
primarily an academic description of an artistic philosophy, so that just
about anything can be approached in a postModernist manner; which is why
the philosophy is often confuses with eclectism aka synergism, which is a
completely different (& historically much older - you can find eclectic
principles in Herodotus) philosophy.

The devil's dictionary defines postModernism as the academic version of
if you can't beat 'em, join 'em; & this cynical view of the philosophy
is actually fairly helpful, because it explains the rational & mechanics
of the school fairly well.  Modernism was philosophically the art of the
machine; & the various post Modernist approaches began to appear when it
became clear that the audience by & large preferred hearts & flowers to
mechanistically ogranised tone rows.

True postModernism's most recognisable branch is Pop Art (with Andy's soup
cans almost defining another version of the philosophy); although many of
the new romantic schools of composition - in particular, the so-called New
York school & related philosophies (a fairly big umbrella which includes
conventional names like Cage & less conventional names like Glass) & the
holy minimalists such as Gorecki - are true postModernists in both spirit
& execution.  In a different sense, Bernstein was a postModernist as well;
but Ives (like Glenn Gould after him) was a maverick romantic who
occasionally foreshadowed some elements of the later approach.

The two big problems with the expression is that hardly anyone ever
agrees what Modernism was, making defining post Modernism a particularly
inventive challenge (i take the mechanistic line; differentiating
the school quite explicitly from the late romantic school known as
Progressivism - there are other differentiations; & some ambiguity:
Schoenberg certainly should be viewed as a Modernist because he accentuated
to the mechanical process of composition through his version of tone-row
organisation but his philosophy is often Progressivist; while Ives's
writings often parallel Progressivist philosophy chapter & verse yet
he rejected just about Progressivist (& Modernist, for that matter)
principle of composition); & because postModernism is often confused with
eclecticism.  As i've said before, though, the expression is pretty much
on its last legs; & will soon be relegated to that great Academia in the
sky as a useful aesthetic terminology.

Hope this has confused you even further...  if not, i'll try harder next
time....

Live in peace
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