SUMMARY
The proclamation of postmodernity as a kind of »regulative idea« of contemporary culture has – along with the belief about the »Unübersichtlichkeit« of artistic volition – enthroned the notion that contemporary composers are compelled to modify the past compositional practices. The reason is the fact that the ideology of the New, so characteristic of 20th century musical tradition, somehow lost its former sharpness. This almost unquestioned feature of contemporary compositional practice seems to be discussed on the assumption that there is no common horizon of criteria. Nonetheless, the problematics of »postmodern Unübersichtlichkeit« appears more as a witness of the social perplexity than as a token of compositional characteristics. Namely, it remains an open question of a certain intellectual stance whether the notion of musical postmodernity as a »myriad of co-existing mirrors« should be seen as a new, widely accepted historiographical corrective, or as a baffling end of the once supposedly homogeneous unfoldment of the compositional past. But this question is beyond the scope of this paper which focuses on the compositional apparatus. Thus, I would like to address the prospects of this assumption with regards above all to the symphonic music of the last two decades of the 20th century in Slovenia.