sometimes very demanding creations. This was all the more disappointing for many, since it was the very same audience that unanimously applauded the masters of the classical-romantic tradition, whose legitimate heirs they saw themselves as. As a result, the need to explain the new was recognised. Many composers therefore endeavoured to provide the theoretical and aesthetic underpinnings needed to understand their works. In particular, musicological and music-theoretical writings, such as Schönberg's or Busonis visionary Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst (1906) are of great influence on the development of New Music. Also noteworthy in this context is the almanac Der Blaue Reiter (1912) edited by Kandinsky and Marc, which contains, among other things, an essay on Free Music by the Russian Futurist Nikolai Kulbin. This willingness to engage intellectually and technically with the unsolved problems of tradition, as well as the sometimes unbending attitude in the pursuit of set compositional goals and experimental arrangements, are further characteristic features of Neue Musik. The stylistic pluralism that emerged under these conditions continues into the present. In this respect, the term "Neue Musik" is suitable neither as a designation for an epoch nor as a style. Rather, it has a qualitative connotation that is related to the degree of originality (in the sense of novel or unheard-of) of the production method as well as the final result. Expressionism and Impressionism, but also styles of visual art such as Futurism and Dadaism provide aesthetic foundations on which new music can be created. Perhaps the composers and works that have been able to establish themselves as "classics of modernism" in the concert hall in the course of the last century and whose innovations have found their way into the canon of compositional techniques can best be understood under the heading of "new music": Thus, in addition to Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, Igor Stravinsky, Phillipp Jarnach, Béla Bartók and Paul Hindemith. The depiction and assessment of historical development on the basis of an assumed "rivalry" between Schoenberg and Stravinsky is a construct that can be traced back to Theodor W. Adorno. The Second World War represents a clear caesura. Many of the early stylistic, formal and aesthetic experiments of New Music then pass into the canon of compositional tools taught from mid-century onwards and passed on to a younger generation of composers of (again) New Music. In this respect, the technical innovations of sound recording