As an aesthetic movement it was formed partly in reaction to modernism but is not primarily defined as oppositional to modernist music.
Postmodernists question the tight definitions and categories of academic disciplines, which they regard simply as the remnants of modernity.
[4] Drawing from Jameson and other theorists, David Beard and Kenneth Gloag argue that, in music, postmodernism is not just an attitude but also an inevitability in the current cultural climate of fragmentation.
He loosely follows Jean Francois Lyotard's views of synthesizing schemes, unity coherence, generality, totality, and structure losing their authority.
[13] Beard and Gloag support this position, citing Jameson's theory that "the radical changes of musical styles and languages throughout the 1960s [are] now seen as a reflection of postmodernism".