Electric Guitar Practice in Contemporary Art Music: 1945–Present

Composed in 1945, Igor Stravinsky’s Ebony Concerto (1945) represents one of the earliest works to integrate the electric guitar into contemporary Western art music, marking its emergence within a text-centred compositional practice from the predominantly oral traditions of popular music. Since then, the instrument has assumed an increasingly prominent role in contemporary art music. Despite this, the historical development of electric guitar practice in contemporary art music remains poorly understood. Few studies have examined the instrument’s repertoire, and fewer still have done so over extended periods and in the context of a global community of composers. Consequently, the ways in which the instrument has contributed to compositional and performance practice remain largely unexplored. Given its history in the field, dating back at least to the mid-1940s, this constitutes a significant gap in scholarship and a missed opportunity to examine the connectedness of musical practices often considered distinct. Employing analytical, historical, ethnographic, and practice-led methods, the thesis addresses this gap by examining the development of repertoire for the electric guitar and its associated performance practice within contemporary art music since 1945. Part I undertakes a quantitative analysis of the Sheer Pluck Database of Contemporary Guitar Music and presents a series of twelve case studies which position the electric guitar within the creative practices of composers and performers who contributed significantly to the repertoire from 1945 to the turn of the twenty-first century. Situating these practices within their historical and geographical contexts, the case studies examine how the instrument’s evolving sonic, material, technological, cultural, and imagined dimensions have contributed to shaping compositional practice throughout the twentieth century. Extensive archival research reveals the instrument’s role as a formative agent in the technological development of post-war compositional practice, anticipating subsequent developments in electronic and computer music. Part II addresses the period from the beginning of the twenty-first century to the present (2026) through interviews with composers and performers, alongside autoethnographic research grounded in critical reflection on my own professional performance practice. Composer interviews provide insights into how the electric guitar is used and conceived within current compositional practice. They also reveal tensions between notions of aesthetic autonomy in music and the instrument’s intertextual capacity, as well as between abstract approaches to composition and those grounded in embodied, practice-led engagement. Building on findings from the historical case studies in Part I, the analysis of performer interviews and autoethnography reveals the distinctive demands of electric guitar performance practice arising from its identity as a network-based instrument.