# Has everything in music been done already?



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

This sounds like a troll question, but I promise it's not. I'm also writing from considerable ignorance about very recent music, so I look forward to others setting me straight.

It just occurred to me that, in the last century, it's likely that _everything_ you could possibly think of was tried at least once. That doesn't mean all possible ideas have been explored or developed. But they have been tried.

If this is true, it would explain why the last couple decades (at least) of contemporary classical music have relied heavily on postmodern pastiche, combining old influences in new ways - not that there's anything wrong with that. But I wonder, can there ever be a truly new "big idea" in music again?

Or was the whole concept of "big ideas," of linear development in music, something that could only exist for a few centuries under certain conditions, and has now run its course?


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

In my opinion, no. 

We've barely even begun to explore alternate scales such as 24 tone and other exotic scales. I also expect there to be advances in technology both in our instruments and our abilities to hear frequencies and this will open an entire new sound world we can't even imagine.


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## Guest (Jun 7, 2015)

In the eighteenth century, a critic claimed that since Boccherini had already done it all, there was nothing left for Mozart to do.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

some guy said:


> In the eighteenth century, a critic claimed that since Boccherini had already done it all, there was nothing left for Mozart to do.


Source? ........


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Weston said:


> In my opinion, no.
> 
> We've barely even begun to explore alternate scales such as 24 tone and other exotic scales. I also expect there to be advances in technology both in our instruments and our abilities to hear frequencies and this will open an entire new sound world we can't even imagine.


True, but we _have_ begun to explore microtonal scales, for quite a while now. So while there may be a lot of new exploration left to do, this is not a new big idea.

But I'm very intrigued by the idea of expanding our ability to hear frequencies!



some guy said:


> In the eighteenth century, a critic claimed that since Boccherini had already done it all, there was nothing left for Mozart to do.


Yes, but I don't believe this is responsive to what I wrote.

To reframe my question a bit: I am wondering whether the idea of musical innovation and development over time is not a universal given but in fact an ideology that flourished in the West from ca. 800 to 2000 A.D., and can no more continue forever than any other ideology or social structure in history.


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## Gaspard de la Nuit (Oct 20, 2014)

It actually is a good question, even though I think the answer is a flat-out no. Obviously composers spent a great deal of time and effort exploring musical possibility, but it sits rather poorly with me to think that even within specific idioms, e.g., a Liszt/ Chopin/ Schumann piano-style, a Ravel/ Debussy-style, etc., all or most possibilities have been exhausted. 

To be honest I think part of it comes from a culture within the classical music composition universe that puts ridiculous expectations on composers that have nothing to do with quality, one of them being that new music can't sound too much like old music to be worthwhile, as well as the idea that if you copy the style of a composer, you are as good as plagiarizing.

It baffles me as to how any musician would ever achieve greatness with those as guidelines.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Hm, I need to clarify. I'm not asking whether we're out of new music to write. I would never suggest that. I'm asking whether we're out of big ideas - revolutionary, unexpected new styles and techniques.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

isorhythm said:


> Hm, I need to clarify. I'm not asking whether we're out of new music to write. I would never suggest that. I'm asking whether we're out of big ideas - revolutionary, unexpected new styles and techniques.


Isorhytym, have you spent much time on the incipitsify and score follower youtube channels?

https://www.youtube.com/user/incipitsify
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsCyncBPEzI6pb_pmALJ9Tw

You'll find here the absolute forefront of instrumental modern classical music.

One boundless piece that has impressed me for a while is Pierluigi Billone's 1 + 1 = 1 for two bass clarinets, an awesome tour de force that not only is exciting, but opens the door to a whole lot of interesting potential music!


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Since the future is an unknown, I'll have to say "no".


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Weston said:


> In my opinion, no.
> 
> *We've barely even begun to explore alternate scales such as 24 tone and other exotic scales.* I also expect there to be advances in technology both in our instruments and our abilities to hear frequencies and this will open an entire new sound world we can't even imagine.


Yes, yes and yes! I've always wondered why no one yet has taken the piano tuning in La Monte Young's Well Tuned Piano and combined it with other instruments and electronics. That would probably make for an awesome, unique resonant sound. And that's just getting started.


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## Guest (Jun 7, 2015)

Well, I think (or hope?) that the only limit is the hearing range of the human ear.

There may well be "big" ideas in the future, but progress does not occur (only) through revolution, it occurs through evolution. A sort of Thomas Kuhn thing going on I believe!


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I've always imagined that new technology would create new instruments and timbres. Eventually all instruments (any timbre) would be possible with synthesizers. I imagine that learning to use the new timbres well would be time consuming since they could be significantly different than anything we've heard. I also think (as mentioned) that new scales could be explored more. In theory, of course, people could use any imaginable timbre and hearable frequency. 

Not being a composer and not having a sense of how they think about music, I really don't know what new things they view as interesting to explore.


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## Guest (Jun 7, 2015)

I suppose I'm partly driven by faith: I don't want us to have reached the terminus.


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## Guest (Jun 7, 2015)

Dim7 said:


> Source? ........


Sorry. I looked for this online. Didn't find it.

I got it from Barzun's bio of Berlioz.

But I got rid of everything I possessed about two years ago. Everything but the three C's: clothes, computer, and cat. So I don't know where it is in that. I think volume one.


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## Guest (Jun 7, 2015)

some guy said:


> cat


Congratulations, you've just been upgraded.

Respect for the clearout too. I'd do the same, but for the SO.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Is progress a myth - probably. That doesn't mean we can't have gradual change and development leading to paradigm shifts.

The whole point about paradigm shifts is that they are unpredictable. One day we're all going on about epicycles in an earth centric system and then, apparently suddenly, we have a solar centric system with ellipses, Kepler's laws. Next thing we know is that everything is relative.

Sometimes it's an old idea like the isorhythm of the 14th century Ars Nova taken up by modern composers such as Alban Berg, Olivier Messiaen, John Cage, and George Crumb.

All this microtonality stuff and hearing new frequencies links neatly back into medieval Spanish music with it's (quarter tone) Arabic influences also in both Fado Flamenco and into Gaelic song which relies on a varied tonality through melismata. Listening to such music does change your understanding of tonality.

Part of the trouble is that people have been looking for the next big idea - Bartok looking at Romanian folk song with sprectral influences through their use of wind instruments - rather than simply plugging away at playing music. Maybe part of the trouble is that we have moved away from the musician as composer to the composer who happens to play an instrument.

Goodness alone knows where Classical music will be in twenty years time. An interesting thought from the history of my own country: Scotland had a brief flourishing of music in the mid 18th century. We had a number of composers writing interesting music. We didn't have a division between art and folk music. We had Neil Gow listening to, composing and playing minuets. We failed to stay current, perhaps because of our geographical isolation. Music moved on. Nobody wanted to come to Scotland to play. The music scene died. Unless music stays current and attracts new people and new ideas it will not develop. The Scottish scene flourished because it was in touch with places like Mannheim (through the grand tour); when it stayed in its comfort zone classical music stagnated.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Microtonality not only opens a new sensual realm, but cerebral as well: now we can have 24-tone atonality!


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

When I was younger and making initial ventures into the world of composing, I was put off every now and then by thinking that everything I wanted to write had already been done and it was basically impossible to be original any more. As time went by I realised how much new stuff, how much original stuff can be created! Other composition students have similarly said things like that only to realise that _yes, originality still exists._

This will probably be an ongoing thing for the rest of time.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Taggart said:


> Part of the trouble is that people have been looking for the next big idea - Bartok looking at Romanian folk song with sprectral influences through their use of wind instruments - rather than simply plugging away at playing music. Maybe part of the trouble is that we have moved away from the musician as composer to the composer who happens to play an instrument.


Not sure I get the Bartok reference here...Bartok was a professional classical pianist. His _Mikrokosmos_ is considered an excellent resource for aspiring pianists.

So he isn't an example of a composer who just dabbled at the instrument. I think he was very inspired by the percussive nature of the piano.


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## Kevin Pearson (Aug 14, 2009)

For me it really doesn't matter too much because there is already more music than I can listen to in a lifetime anyway, and since I struggle with, and am not too fond of a lot of modern music (not all by any means) my instincts tell me that most music of the future would not be my cup of tea unless there is a return to tonality.

Kevin


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

tdc said:


> Not sure I get the Bartok reference here...Bartok was a professional classical pianist. His _Mikrokosmos_ is considered an excellent resource for aspiring pianists.
> 
> So he isn't an example of a composer who just dabbled at the instrument. I think he was very inspired by the percussive nature of the piano.


Wiki on Spectral Music:



> Romanian folk music, as collected by Béla Bartók (1904-1918), with its acoustic scales derived directly from resonance and natural wind instruments like "buciume", "tulnice", and "cimpoi" inspired several spectral composers: Vieru, Stroe, Niculescu, Dumitrescu and Nemescu.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Taggart said:


> Wiki on Spectral Music:


That is interesting, Taggart, and something I wasn't aware of. Still, I'm confused at what exactly you think is problematic about this. Why do you think it means that Bartok was just "looking for the next big idea" and not simply "plugging away at music".

What exactly is the "trouble" you are referring to in that paragraph I quoted in post #19?


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Bartok was an excellent pianist. Mikrokosmos is an excellent resource for pianists. Bartok was influenced by Hungarian and Romanian dance melodies and rhythms. Whereas Chopin, Grieg and to a lesser extent Vaughan Williams could use their own native music, Bartok (IMHO) was never able to make that transition because he kept looking for the next big idea. That's the trouble I'm referring to.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

tdc said:


> That is interesting, Taggart, and something I wasn't aware of...


What is your own view on the OP, tdc? :tiphat:

(Mine - based on experience of life & literature - is that not everything *has* been done already, but that the 'new thing' may not turn out to be off-the-planet different. In other words, I have no idea, and am just hedging my bets... :lol: )


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Taggart said:


> Bartok was an excellent pianist. Mikrokosmos is an excellent resource for pianists. Bartok was influenced by Hungarian and Romanian dance melodies and rhythms. Whereas Chopin, Grieg and to a lesser extent Vaughan Williams could use their own native music, Bartok (IMHO) was never able to make that transition because he kept looking for the next big idea. That's the trouble I'm referring to.


Well, you are certainly free to your opinion, but it still doesn't make a lot of sense to me - you are acknowledging that Bartok was influenced by his native (Hungarian) music, but saying that Bartok couldn't _use_ it somehow? Or make a "transition" when using it? What transition? Do you mean that you feel he transformed the music too much?

It seems that Bartok was pretty much a constant flow of ideas - creative ideas, and is generally considered among the finest composers. I don't think he was searching for a big idea anymore than Bach or Mozart were searching for big ideas.

If you disagree that is fine, I just still am rather confused by your actual position though.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Ingélou said:


> What is your own view on the OP, tdc? :tiphat:
> 
> (Mine - based on experience of life & literature - is that not everything *has* been done already, but that the 'new thing' may not turn out to be off-the-planet different. In other words, I have no idea, and am just hedging my bets... :lol: )


My view is similar to yours. Essentially I don't think any of us can really know right now whether everything in music has been done before. However I feel that we are living in a time when plenty of excellent classical music is being composed - both in very conservative and traditional ways and countless avant-garde ways. I genuinely think there are things for all tastes out right now - a lot of it seems pretty new, but who knows whether it has already been done before? Not me.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Isorhytym, have you spent much time on the incipitsify and score follower youtube channels?
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/user/incipitsify
> https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsCyncBPEzI6pb_pmALJ9Tw
> ...


Thanks for the recs! I listened to the bass clarinet piece yesterday and really dug it. I got a pretty heavy Berio influence from it, am I wrong?

I'm going to be exploring more of this.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> When I was younger and making initial ventures into the world of composing, I was put off every now and then by thinking that everything I wanted to write had already been done and it was basically impossible to be original any more. As time went by I realised how much new stuff, how much original stuff can be created! Other composition students have similarly said things like that only to realise that _yes, originality still exists._
> 
> This will probably be an ongoing thing for the rest of time.


That's because new knowledge is constantly being covered-up by a barrage of new information, but only so many layers of information can be assimilated at a time by each succeeding generation; so the originality is just the new, recycled stuff on top that smells fresher. You'll find that if you dig deep enough, some stinking example exists which will invalidate your originality, but it stinks so bad that your fresher, newer originality is preferred.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

I believe we humans are still quite juvenile when it comes to timbre. Why does a trumpet sound like a trumpet and a violin like a violin? When we've mastered the technical understanding of that, we will compose music on spectrograms, and not on sheet music. Unfathomable sound worlds await us.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Couchie said:


> I believe we humans are still quite juvenile when it comes to timbre. Why does a trumpet sound like a trumpet and a violin like a violin? When we've mastered the technical understanding of that, we will compose music on spectrograms, and not on sheet music. Unfathomable sound worlds await us.


I don't think we've started composing on 'spectrograms' but you've pretty much described 'spectralism' in a nutshell. The idea has been around for perhaps 50 years.


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## Kilgore Trout (Feb 26, 2014)

isorhythm said:


> But I wonder, can there ever be a truly new "big idea" in music again?


No, and anyone thinking otherwise is deluded.

This is just to get some contemptuous answer by some guy.


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## AnotherSpin (Apr 9, 2015)

Since Stones had already done it all, there was nothing left for Mahler to do.


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## Guest (Jun 8, 2015)

Kilgore Trout said:


> No, and anyone thinking otherwise is deluded.
> 
> This is just to get some contemptuous answer by some guy.


What, can't I then?


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## Kilgore Trout (Feb 26, 2014)

dogen said:


> What, can't I then?


No, you can't. Only some guy has the right to show others that he knows better. Sorry, that's life.


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## Guest (Jun 8, 2015)

Kilgore Trout said:


> No, you can't. Only some guy has the right to show others that he knows better. Sorry, that's life.


OK.

I can dream though.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Really big new ideas tend to be those the rest of the world wouldn't or couldn't have anticipated, so any collection of answers to this question is inevitably going to be of dubious value, however much we might enjoy speculating. I'll settle for good new music.


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## tortkis (Jul 13, 2013)

Weston said:


> In my opinion, no.
> 
> We've barely even begun to explore alternate scales such as 24 tone and other exotic scales. I also expect there to be advances in technology both in our instruments and our abilities to hear frequencies and this will open an entire new sound world we can't even imagine.





mmsbls said:


> I've always imagined that new technology would create new instruments and timbres. Eventually all instruments (any timbre) would be possible with synthesizers. I imagine that learning to use the new timbres well would be time consuming since they could be significantly different than anything we've heard. I also think (as mentioned) that new scales could be explored more. In theory, of course, people could use any imaginable timbre and hearable frequency.


I agree. There are infinite possibilities of tones, scales, timbre, time structure, etc. of which our perceptive ability could evolve.

_"Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music."_ - John Cage


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

There may not be anything new under the sun but let's enjoy the music and move on and not worry too much about the philosophical implications of innovation LOL.


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