The language in the TMT article doesn’t really do the ideas any service. I think of it like this (and maybe this isn’t what the article means, but whatever):
Speaking strictly about the western art music tradition, music in the late 19th century tends to always have narrative/metaphorical meaning, often cause it’s written for dance/theater/opera. The theoretical aesthetic high-point of this tendency is Wagner’s total-work-of-art, the synthesis of all art-forms, but also the complete immersion of all the viewers senses to the art work. I think we could easily call this “worldbuilding” and it’s no surprise that it coincides with the height of European colonialism: the literal building of one actual “world” over many.
After that you get various 20th c. avant-garde movements that resist “worlds,” narrative and theatricality. From Stravinsky insisting the music has no metaphorical meaning, to 4’33 making the music about the real world (the concert space, the actual audience) and not a fictional space, to music concrete insisting one listen to recorded sound without considering a referent. That all happens as European colonialism starts to collapse and we get the rise of American and Soviet superpowers.
Now we live in a postcolonial world where superpowers are collapsing and there is a proliferation of new artistic, political, social, personal identities and “worlds.” There is now also a firm tradition of anti-narrative avant-guardism and most “experimental” music these days seems to be interested in mixing ideas from that tradition with new narrative/theatrical marginal and alternative world-building.
I hope that makes sense.
To answer the OP: some of my fav worlds in music are made by bands like Kraftwerk, Drexciya, Devo, The Residents.
