Quotation and psychogeographic experience as repetition in the music of Bernhard Lang and Chico Mello

A psychogeographic reading of the music theatre works of composers Bernhard Lang and Chico Mello can aid an understanding of the more subtle approaches to ‘quotation’, borrowing or ownership and intertextuality in their works. These are signalled by competing cultural geographies which also indicate the composers’ differing experiences of place and of modernism. Geographically, Lang’s and Mello’s works are situated as modernist, but their features cause them to appear postminimalist. This analysis will allow for a greater understanding of the motivations of the two composers’ borrowing practices, and the link between personal experience, quotation, and repetition, as well as an assessment of whether applying labels such as minimalist or modernist to their work might even be helpful or appropriate. It will conclude by considering the status of time in their works, as constituted in the use of quotation and repetition, and the nature and context of quotation as repetition.