# So, where are we right now, and where are we going with music?



## Goddess Yuja Wang (Aug 8, 2017)

Hopefully we can divide this into two clear categories> 1.- RIGHT NOW and 2.- In the near future.


If we had to catalogue current classical music styles and tendencies, what would it look like now? I mean, what are the main CM "currents" as of TODAY? Is tonality still considered uncool and old-fashioned, or is it just one more accepted tendency now-a-days? 
What are the others?


By the upper middle of the 20th century, we had Serialism, Minimalism, Spectralism, Neo-Classical, etc. Are these styles still current these days? Or is it more like Neo-Serialism, Neo-Minimalism all over again?

I know it's not always helpful to have this sort of cataloging, but I'm just trying to get a general picture of where we are now with CM styles (or genre or whatever it's called).


And more importantly, *what's left to try or to do? *
It seems to me that every possible musical experiment has already been done. Will composers of the near future have to resort to dividing the octave into more than 12 equal steps in their quest for something new? Or do you think the tendency will be to revisit every historical style again and call it Neo-Baroque? Wouldn't it be more like Neo-Neo-Neo Classical or Neo-Neo-Neo Romantic? 


 I'm just curious about the current accepted styles/tendencies, and what sort of music will be composed in say, the next 100 years…


Yes. I'm inviting observation, and informed guessing and speculation.


----------



## vsm (Aug 26, 2017)

Interesting topic and discussion... glad you brought this up Yuja.

I think experimentation will never stop, but I doubt it'll be something that the masses will have to accept, like we tried doing back in the 60's or 70's. I think that the future looks mostly into new discoveries in the tonal realm. We have tried everything in the past decades, and I feel we have settled into the tonality because it just sounds better


----------



## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Same stuff as late-20th century like the ones you mentioned. Waiting for the next big thing whether in a new direction or back to old.


----------



## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Goddess Yuja Wang said:


> I know it's not always helpful to have this sort of cataloging, but I'm just trying to get a general picture of where we are now with CM styles (or genre or whatever it's called).
> 
> And more importantly, *what's left to try or to do? *


I believe that we are current in the Neo-post-modern minimal spectra-serialism having just gotten past Pre-post classical minimal spectra-serialism which, perhaps fortunately, I missed (I was having an afternoon nap that day.)

But seriously, what is left to try to do? How about writing music which is new, interesting and engaging, and which classical music audiences will want to go to listen to. Strangely enough, it is happening, just not often enough. It was ever thus.


----------



## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

This is the wrong site to ask, considering how in the past everybody is


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Goddess Yuja Wang said:


> It seems to me that every possible musical experiment has already been done.


Yuja Wrong. About that, anyway. Art always has experimental elements, sometimes very subtle, sometimes in the forefront. In our own era, still-advancing modern electronic technology has only just begun to have its full impact.


----------



## Gordontrek (Jun 22, 2012)

Interesting question. I am seeing more and more composers return to tonality, but most still write "experimental" music. Still, though, I wouldn't be surprised to see classical music as a whole make another shift back towards tonality. Post-tonal music has basically had 100 years to become popular, and it hasn't. Decades have passed and audiences still snore through Schoenberg and Webern. Whereas most great "tonal composers" throughout history were either instantly popular, or became loved and appreciated within one or two decades of their death. Apologists of modern music love to quote critics of Beethoven's 9th as evidence that every great work is rejected at first; but how long did it take for that work to become regarded by the world as a masterpiece, compared to almost any atonal work which is STILL not universally liked by anyone outside of academia or the business itself? Time is running out. People better wake up and smell the roses, or atonality might be in trouble.


----------



## Clairvoyance Enough (Jul 25, 2014)

New instruments maybe? Think of all the mileage that was gotten out of just exploring the possibilities of the piano, or of the romantics pushing the boundaries of orchestration. To my ears the character of tonal music has never really slowed down in its evolution. The soundworld introduced by the electric guitar, let alone all electronics, even if harmonically simple or identical compared to much older classical music, is entirely different in its personality. But serious composers of art music seem to have completely ignored it (and any other new instruments), for the most part anyway.


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Gordontrek said:


> Post-tonal music has basically had 100 years to become popular, and it hasn't.


Ahh, but that just isn't true, no matter have often it's said in online classical music forums. Marius Constant's Twilight Zone Theme, jazzers like Eric Dolphy, the Beatles (The Beatles, aka The White Album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heats Club Band), Frank Zappa and many other examples of familiar hit popular music have been strongly influenced by post-tonal ideas, even if it isn't the only or even main element in them. And hit popular music in turn then has its impact on "serious" composers.
I guess it sneaked up on you while you weren't listening.


----------



## Gordontrek (Jun 22, 2012)

fluteman said:


> Ahh, but that just isn't true, no matter have often it's said in online classical music forums. Marius Constant's Twilight Zone Theme, jazzers like Eric Dolphy, the Beatles (The Beatles, aka The White Album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heats Club Band), Frank Zappa and many other examples of familiar hit popular music have been strongly influenced by post-tonal ideas, even if it isn't the only or even main element in them. And hit popular music in turn then has its impact on "serious" composers.
> I guess it sneaked up on you while you weren't listening.


Right, because people are just banging down the doors to get albums of Schoenberg, Cage, Stockhausen, Webern, Berg, et al.


----------



## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

This thread is going to be a nightmare, I can feel it...


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Gordontrek said:


> Right, because people are just banging down the doors to get albums of Schoenberg, Cage, Stockhausen, Webern, Berg, et al.


Well in the second-hand vinyl shop I get records at the sections for Schoenberg, Berg, Hindemith, Stockhausen etc (and these are labelled) are always either empty or the few they have disappear quickly. It's because it's quite hard to find them and rather easy to find other records like Bach. People do actually want them, as unusual as this may appear to some other people.


----------



## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

Where music innovation is going is not where a large majority of music conscious and music focused people can see it going. It always is creating something new. I think some of us imagine music that is too difficult right now to create. I think we want it to be a combination of old and new. The sounds of Stockhausen with the beauty and mathematics of Bach. No one can do that.


----------



## Goddess Yuja Wang (Aug 8, 2017)

fluteman said:


> Yuja Wrong. About that, anyway. Art always has experimental elements, sometimes very subtle, sometimes in the forefront. In our own era, *still-advancing modern electronic technology has only just begun to have its full impact.*


Very interesting point.

No doubt electronic music has a lot to explore. However, if you think of music globally as simply _organized sound in time that gives pleasure and ignites emotions_, composers have a finite set of basic parameters they can play with that ends up still resembling something like music.

Yes. There seem to be countless effects and processes and combinations one can apply to music, but they act upon a handful of those basic parameters (pitch, time/rhythm, timbre, etc.). How long before even _that_ becomes cliché and boring? Judging by what little I know of the electronic scene (as in EDM), a lot of sounds and effects, even harmonies and stylistic instrument mannerisms, become old pretty fast.
And unless composers find ways of manipulating music electronically that allows them to create sublime and interesting music, I'm not sure that style would last long enough to cause an important long-lasting impact. Maybe it would become as accepted as our current "atonal stuff", at best.

I suppose modern Hip-Hop and other similar styles illustrate some very interesting sound sculpting and manipulation. *Do you think that at one point Classical Music and modern EDM styles will meet and mingle and find decent acceptance?*

*Do you see dividing the octave into more pitches as other than a temporal curiosity?* Something that can hold the interest of composers to explore and find a wide audience? I don't think I do. And that has been already done, correct?

*Perhaps taste and composing styles are cyclic, like most things in nature?*

Maybe we will keep cycling through all the music history styles once every century or so? 
I can definitely see that happening, but always together with the "sinister bad boy", the inseparable companion> the avant-garde, whatever its style fancies at the time (even if that involves incorporating other animal species into the orchestra  )

Maybe occasionally, as we go through the cycle, interesting "opposing styles" will emerge? Just like Minimalism was a direct reaction to the excesses of Serialism, or Impressionism was a reaction to extreme Romanticism, we might get a great new reactionary style during one of the rounds! How about _Post Romantic Neo Renaissance Pseudo Neo Tonality_?

Perhaps someone will create a new tonal hierarchy or system but this time according to and based on a different mode? How about some Locrian-Natural-9th Baroque?


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I believe composers are mostly finished with neo-neoism, and post-neo-neoism is very likely soon to fade and give way to neo-post-neo-neoism. This can only be a healthy development.


----------



## Gordontrek (Jun 22, 2012)

eugeneonagain said:


> Well in the second-hand vinyl shop I get records at the sections for Schoenberg, Berg, Hindemith, Stockhausen etc (and these are labelled) are always either empty or the few they have disappear quickly. It's because it's quite hard to find them and rather easy to find other records like Bach. People do actually want them, as unusual as this may appear to some other people.


Point taken; however my point was more directed at the idea that people buy up Beatles albums because they contain post-tonal music. At least that was the idea I picked up on. It seems that the supply of Bach far outweighs the supply of Schoenberg and Stockhausen; I'm not entirely certain that this indicates wide popularity though. Even though, as you said, people do want them.


----------



## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Every once in a while I come across a new or hitherto unknown but recent work that confirms my faith in the present and future of classical music. Today was such a day, a review in the Guardian (link) led me to Steve Elcock's symphony #3 (~2012) (spotify link). While it is somewhat derivative (aren't most works?) it is derivative in a positive way, i.e. building on the past but with something unique to say in an interesting and very personal style.


----------



## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

It's the New Stasis, folks. It won't end soon, unless our entire global culture is profoundly overturned. 

Let's again quote Leonard Meyer: "...change and variety are not incompatible with stasis. For stasis, as I intend the term, is not an absence of novelty and change--a total quiescence--but rather the absence of ordered sequential change. Like molecules rushing about haphazardly in a Brownian movement, a culture bustling with activity and change may nevertheless be static. Indeed, insofar as an active, conscious search for new techniques, new forms and materials, and new modes of sensibility (such as have marked our time) precludes the gradual accumulation of changes capable of producing a trend or series of connected mutations, it tends to create a steady-state, though perhaps one that is both vigorous and variegated. In short......a multiplicity of styles in each of the arts, coexisting in a balanced, yet competitive, cultural environment is producing a fluctuating stasis in contemporary culture."


----------



## Botschaft (Aug 4, 2017)

Becca said:


> But seriously, what is left to try to do? How about writing music which is new, interesting and engaging, and which classical music audiences will want to go to listen to.


Yeah, how about doing that for a change?



eugeneonagain said:


> Well in the second-hand vinyl shop I get records at the sections for Schoenberg, Berg, Hindemith, Stockhausen etc (and these are labelled) are always either empty or the few they have disappear quickly. It's because it's quite hard to find them and rather easy to find other records like Bach. People do actually want them, as unusual as this may appear to some other people.


Billions of people, I'm sure.



Strange Magic said:


> It's the New Stasis, folks. It won't end soon, unless our entire global culture is profoundly overturned.


Perhaps WWIII, technological singularity or space colonization can assist with that, when humanity and its future is called into question. In any case I think more natural and human styles will eventually dawn anew; _naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret_. Nothing stopped Renaissance or Neoclassicist artists of the past, so what would stop those of the future?


----------



## Kivimees (Feb 16, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> I believe composers are mostly finished with neo-neoism, and post-neo-neoism is very likely soon to fade and give way to neo-post-neo-neoism. This can only be a healthy development.


Thanks. Now I won't be able to fall asleep tonight.


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

OP: you are asking that of a mostly conservative classical music forum, where, I'm guessing, 75% or more of the membership are perfectly happy listening and relistening to their beloved Beethoven and Brahms works, until oblivion is upon them?

Right now with music? The typical TC listeners are blissfully stagnant. Enough great music from the past, to saturate themselves for a lifetime.

There is a group here that does care about the state of classical music today and its future, but in my opinion, they are a distinct minority of TC posters...though loudly vocal!!! 

Since nobody on TC could possibly know the answer as to where classical music is going, I suggest you check back here on TC in 50 years or so, since the true answer to the querie can only be tackled in retrospect.


----------



## Botschaft (Aug 4, 2017)

hpowders said:


> OP: you are asking that of a mostly conservative classical music forum, where, I'm guessing, 85% of the membership are perfectly happy listening and relistening to their beloved Beethoven and Brahms works, until oblivion is upon them?
> 
> Right now with music? These listeners are blissfully stagnant.
> 
> Very few on this site care where music is going.


Blissfully stagnant: this will henceforth be my motto.


----------



## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

I believe we have already covered this: the future is the return to the Middle Ages...


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Goddess Yuja Wang said:


> Very interesting point.
> 
> No doubt electronic music has a lot to explore. However, if you think of music globally as simply _organized sound in time that gives pleasure and ignites emotions_, composers have a finite set of basic parameters they can play with that ends up still resembling something like music.
> 
> ...


To answer all of your questions, which do raise some interesting issues, I think predicting the future is a fool's errand. But I also think that the idea that mankind has run out of new ideas or discoveries, whether in the sciences or in the arts, is an old one that is raised repeatedly, and always, without exception, turns out to be dead wrong.


----------



## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

To define something we should look backwards. when we talk about now and what we have at this moment it's very difficult to to say we have this or that since we are not talking about present. In present there are compositions, composing but not a style. For style to become a style needs time when listeners and critics will pronounce this is "classicism" or "romanticism" or anything else. it should become crystallized by the time a new name for this tendency or style comes up. 

maybe it's a way too agnostic to think like that but to prove it, just look back, when Mozart was alive he didn't know he wrote his compositions in a pure "classical" style and not in any other  or Bach followed baroque rules which he knew by heart. It's us followers, researchers, scholars who give names and it's always much later after actual event occurred.


----------



## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

helenora said:


> To define something we should look backwards. when we talk about now and what we have at this moment it's very difficult to to say we have this or that since we are not talking about present. In present there are compositions, composing but not a style. For style to become a style needs time when listeners and critics will pronounce this is "classicism" or "romanticism" or anything else. it should become crystallized by the time a new name for this tendency or style comes up.
> 
> maybe it's a way too agnostic to think like that but to prove it, just look back, when Mozart was alive he didn't know he wrote his compositions in a pure "classical" style and not in any other  or Bach followed baroque rules which he knew by heart. It's us followers, researchers, scholars who give names and it's always much later after actual event occurred.


In Hegel's words: "The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk." You can only understand what is happening after it has become part of the past, not when you are still in the middle of it.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

helenora said:


> To define something we should look backwards. when we talk about now and what we have at this moment it's very difficult to to say we have this or that since we are not talking about present. In present there are compositions, composing but not a style. For style to become a style needs time when listeners and critics will pronounce this is "classicism" or "romanticism" or anything else. it should become crystallized by the time a new name for this tendency or style comes up.
> 
> maybe it's a way too agnostic to think like that but to prove it, just look back, when Mozart was alive he didn't know he wrote his compositions in a pure "classical" style and not in any other  or Bach followed baroque rules which he knew by heart. It's us followers, researchers, scholars who give names and it's always much later after actual event occurred.


It's true that styles and trends become clearer in retrospect, but not true that in all cultures and eras artists are unaware of major stylistic changes occurring in their own day. "Classicism" and "Romanticism" were conscious movements in European culture, which embraced not only music but all the arts and were called by their familiar names (the term "Romanticism" was already in use in Mozart's lifetime).


----------



## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Ideological talk copying ideological talk, that is a copy of ideological talk; somehow I notice that each copy of a copy becomes more indistinct, vague, dim, hazy, blurred, undefinable, filmy, muzzy & fuzzy.


----------



## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

If everything is The Next Big Thing, then......


----------



## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Strange Magic said:


> If everything is The Next Big Thing, then......


"When everyone is somebody, then no one's anybody." - _The Gondoliers_ (substitute as appropriate)


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Becca said:


> "When everyone is somebody, then no one's anybody." - _The Gondoliers_ (substitute as appropriate)


"If you're anxious for to shine in the high aesthetic line as a man of culture rare, 
You must get up all the germs of the transcendental terms, and plant them everywhere." - _Patience: or, Bunthorne's bride_


----------



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Not one person has offered a clear, substantive answer to the question. Is everyone here that ignorant about what's going on? I know I am, but I was hoping some of you would be able to educate me!


----------



## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

isorhythm said:


> Not one person has offered a clear, substantive answer to the question. Is everyone here that ignorant about what's going on? I know I am, but I was hoping some of you would be able to educate me!


Answer: We are surrounded--immersed--in every sort of music right now. Much of it very likely neither you nor I have ever heard or heard of, or maybe will hear. Gonna be that way until Hell freezes over, or until the New Order is established. Nobody is writing like Beethoven currently, but loads of new things are composed and aired constantly. "Satellites transmit the latest thrill; we can't escape the Media overkill."--old Scorpions lyric.


----------



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Strange Magic said:


> Answer: We are surrounded--immersed--in every sort of music right now. Much of it very likely neither you nor I have ever heard or heard of, or maybe will hear. Gonna be that way until Hell freezes over, or until the New Order is established. Nobody is writing like Beethoven currently, but loads of new things are composed and aired constantly. "Satellites transmit the latest thrill; we can't escape the Media overkill."--old Scorpions lyric.


Nonetheless, I think someone who's listened to a lot of music written in the last five years by composers under forty could identify some trends. I'd be curious to know what they are.


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Strange Magic said:


> Answer: We are surrounded--immersed--in every sort of music right now. Much of it very likely neither you nor I have ever heard or heard of, or maybe will hear. Gonna be that way until Hell freezes over, or until the New Order is established. Nobody is writing like Beethoven currently, but loads of new things are composed and aired constantly. "Satellites transmit the latest thrill; we can't escape the Media overkill."--old Scorpions lyric.


Hence the need for historical perspective which can thin out some of the white noise. "Where are we?" and "Where are we going?" are two questions that are very hard to answer in most contexts. But those who have an emotional or intellectual need for order and certainty, which seems to be the case for many here, keep asking such questions and will not be satisfied with your answer, though it is as reasonable as any.


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

isorhythm said:


> Nonetheless, I think someone who's listened to a lot of music written in the last five years by composers under forty could identify some trends. I'd be curious to know what they are.


Christopher Theofanidis is 49 now, and so doesn't quite meet your criteria, but what the heck, have a listen anyway:


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Portamento said:


> This thread is going to be a nightmare, I can feel it...


Only for those who haven't done their necessary prerequisite preparation and homework.


----------



## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

isorhythm said:


> Nonetheless, I think someone who's listened to a lot of music written in the last five years by composers under forty could identify some trends. I'd be curious to know what they are.


"Indeed, insofar as an active, conscious search for new techniques, new forms and materials, and new modes of sensibility (such as have marked our time) *precludes the gradual accumulation of changes capable of producing a trend or series of connected mutations*, it tends to create a steady-state, though perhaps one that is both vigorous and variegated."

This again is Meyer's response, as quoted in my post #18.


----------



## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

isorhythm said:


> Nonetheless, I think someone who's listened to a lot of music written in the last five years by composers under forty could identify some trends. I'd be curious to know what they are.


Do you mean trends like Fluxus, Musique Concrete, New Complexity, Minimalism, Electronic, Spectralism, Electro-acoustic, Turn-tableism, Neo-classicism etc. Because those are _all_ current trends.

One could post a link to some essentially traditional sounding classical music and call it a current trend, or one could post a video of a person crumpling a piece of paper and calling it classical music and call it a current trend.

Where all of this is going is another question. We seem to be in a prolonged era of experimentation. The fact that there is not really one dominant direction most composers are going at the moment, suggests to me we are in a period of searching and rebirth. I predict this will eventually end in a kind of new-tonality of some kind. I think the lack of a dominant direction suggests no composer has really 'struck gold' so to speak for a while - not that the current experiments are worthless. I think they are part of the re-forging and rebirth.


----------



## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> It's true that styles and trends become clearer in retrospect, but not true that in all cultures and eras artists are unaware of major stylistic changes occurring in their own day. "Classicism" and "Romanticism" were conscious movements in European culture, which embraced not only music but all the arts and were called by their familiar names (the term "Romanticism" was already in use in Mozart's lifetime).


my point is not about terms , they might have known a term of Romanticism even earlier. The thing is that whether they consciously compose their pieces taking in mind that well, for this composition I will do like this and that because certain "rules" of this or that style or movement tell me I should compose like that.


----------



## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

helenora said:


> my point is not about terms , they might have known a term of Romanticism even earlier. The thing is that whether they consciously compose their pieces taking in mind that well, for this composition I will do like this and that because certain "rules" of this or that style or movement tell me I should compose like that.


There are anecdotes/letters/reports of conversations indicating that, at the least, both Haydn and Mozart were fully aware of what would please their audiences, and were both willing and eager to supply it.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

helenora said:


> my point is not about terms , they might have known a term of Romanticism even earlier. The thing is that whether they consciously compose their pieces taking in mind that well, for this composition I will do like this and that because certain "rules" of this or that style or movement tell me I should compose like that.


My answer wasn't about terms either. It was a refutation of your statement,

"To define something we should look backwards. When we talk about now and what we have at this moment it's very difficult to to say we have this or that...For style to become a style needs time when listeners and critics will pronounce this is 'classicism' or 'romanticism' or anything else...when Mozart was alive he didn't know he wrote his compositions in a pure 'classical' style and not in any other or Bach followed baroque rules which he knew by heart. It's us followers, researchers, scholars who give names and it's always much later after actual event occurred."

My answer is that artists may be perfectly conscious of working within certain stylistic and cultural trends; they may even be advocates for those trends. The early Italian Baroque consciously pursued a new monodic style - see opera and the solo madrigal - in conscious opposition to Renaissance polyphony. The Galant style was a conscious reaction against the complexities of the late Baroque. The Classical era represented certain aesthetic ideals derived from a conception of Greek "classical" art and the rational sensibility it was thought to embody. I could go on right up to the 20th century.


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

tdc said:


> Do you mean trends like Fluxus, Musique Concrete, New Complexity, Minimalism, Electronic, Spectralism, Electro-acoustic, Turn-tableism, Neo-classicism etc. Because those are _all_ current trends.


Really? Neo-classicism goes back to the teens, twenties and thirties of the last century. Fluxus, Musique Concrete, Electronic, and Minimalism, the fifties and sixties.
How does any of that qualify as "current"?
Ed.: Morton Subotnick, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and Charles Wuorinen are still living, but all are over 80 except Wuorinen, who is 79. Toru Takemitsu, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen are deceased, as is standard bearer of neo-classicism Igor Stravinsky, of course.
They've long since had their long-term impact on western culture, like it or not. Time to stop bickering about it, I'd say.


----------



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I've known a few younger composers who are currently working (no one well-known).

One calls himself a spectralist. Another draws on pop music.

The last young composer to get top billing from big NYC institution was Nico Muhly.

So I think already you can see some trends here, but I was hoping someone whose finger was more on the pulse could offer more detail. I don't doubt that there's a lot more stylistic diversity than there was 100 or 200 years ago, but people being what they are, there will always be trends.


----------



## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

fluteman said:


> Really? Neo-classicism goes back to the teens, twenties and thirties of the last century.


I've seen "neoclassical" used to describe musicians like Nils Frahm and Ólafur Arnalds. Presumably by people unfamiliar with its previous usage.

My only stab at guessing where music is heading is to predict that the boundaries between the various kinds of music might not matter so much to future listeners.


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Nereffid said:


> I've seen "neoclassical" used to describe musicians like Nils Frahm and Ólafur Arnalds. Presumably by people unfamiliar with its previous usage.
> 
> My only stab at guessing where music is heading is to predict that the boundaries between the various kinds of music might not matter so much to future listeners.


Yes, "neoclassical" is a flexible term, as is "minimalist". One could still use both terms for some contemporary music, but that at least in part is due to continuing influence of movements that are now quite old. Many painters still make surrealist and abstract expressionist works, but it's hard to call "current" movements that are now nearly a century old.
I think a lot more historical perspective is needed before one can draw any conclusions on these questions.


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Music reflects general culture and also its fluctuations. Look at the general culture, how it is shattered into thousands of tiny specialist interests and yet (at the risk of seeming to talk like a stereotypical French intellectual) also has fewer barriers. 

No-one really cares that much if someone writes a concerto for softsynths and live chamber orchestra, or if it really conforms to the strict classic idea of a concerto at all. Soul music appears at the Proms and the Dalai Lama was on-stage at Glastonbury. Anything goes. Somewhere there is probably a Vivaldi concert on didgeridoos occurring and a string quartet where the players chainsaw their instruments to death. It's the age of chaotic eclecticism and 'performance art'.

Most of the music currently produced by modern 'trained' composers conforms to either one or several of the developments of music since the turn of the 20th century. Dodecaphonic ideas, contrary to what its obituary-writers say, have not expired, but play a rather prominent role in the output of modern art-music. I think if people are looking for distinctive 'schools of thought' in modern art-music, they may be disappointed.


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

eugeneonagain said:


> Music reflects general culture and also its fluctuations. Look at the general culture, how it is shattered into thousands of tiny specialist interests and yet (at the risk of seeming to talk like a stereotypical French intellectual) also has fewer barriers.
> 
> No-one really cares that much if someone writes a concerto for softsynths and live chamber orchestra, or if it really conforms to the strict classic idea of a concerto at all. Soul music appears at the Proms and the Dalai Lama was on-stage at Glastonbury. Anything goes. Somewhere there is probably a Vivaldi concert on didgeridoos occurring and a string quartet where the players chainsaw their instruments to death. It's the age of chaotic eclecticism and 'performance art'.
> 
> Most of the music currently produced by modern 'trained' composers conforms to either one or several of the developments of music since the turn of the 20th century. Dodecaphonic ideas, contrary to what its obituary-writers say, have not expired, but play a rather prominent role in the output of modern art-music. I think if people are looking for distinctive 'schools of thought' in modern art-music, they may be disappointed.


I agree with all that, but I also think every era seems more eclectic to those living in it than to those examining it centuries later. OTOH, the instant and effective worldwide communication technology we now have does set our own era apart in many ways.


----------



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

No, there is no more music left to be written. Besides that it's impossible to write anything worth listening to in a common practice idiom, because Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and a handful of other people from the same 200 mile radius already wrote everything worthy that the human imagination could conceive in that regard, there is no other way to make music than the techniques developed in the last 400 years or so of humanity by Western-style composers. No, it doesn't matter that that time span is the blink of a cosmic eye and that there are most likely millions other planets in our galaxy alone that have life that humans could communicate with - in a few centuries of life on earth have culminated in the manifestation of all worthwhile musical possibilities.

Yes, just as these very words and any other penned and spoken by anyone whatsoever are devoid of any kind of value because writers and speakers of the past have covered absolutely every experience, imagined every possibility, and reached the zenith of genius unattainable by you mortal worms, so with music there is no point to expressing one's self, because music was never about expressing one's self, it is about your place within the paradigm of progression in western classical music, because the intellectual construct of historical significance is why music brings to joy to humans.


----------



## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

fluteman said:


> Really? Neo-classicism goes back to the teens, twenties and thirties of the last century. Fluxus, Musique Concrete, Electronic, and Minimalism, the fifties and sixties.
> How does any of that qualify as "current"?


Sure, some of the trends in my list are fairly old, but there are still people composing in those styles today, so how is that not a current trend? I think the current trend is this kind of eclecticism, a mix of new styles and old. Some trends evolve for more than just a few decades. Whether one likes this or not it is the way music is being created today, are we supposed to ignore everything that isn't completely novel as being irrelevant to current trends? Music doesn't work that way.


----------



## Gordontrek (Jun 22, 2012)

Gaspard de la Nuit said:


> No, there is no more music left to be written. Besides that it's impossible to write anything worth listening to in a common practice idiom, because Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and a handful of other people from the same 200 mile radius already wrote everything worthy that the human imagination could conceive in that regard, there is no other way to make music than the techniques developed in the last 400 years or so of humanity by Western-style composers. No, it doesn't matter that that time span is the blink of a cosmic eye and that there are most likely millions other planets in our galaxy alone that have life that humans could communicate with - in a few centuries of life on earth have culminated in the manifestation of all worthwhile musical possibilities.
> 
> Yes, just as these very words and any other penned and spoken by anyone whatsoever are devoid of any kind of value because writers and speakers of the past have covered absolutely every experience, imagined every possibility, and reached the zenith of genius unattainable by you mortal worms, so with music there is no point to expressing one's self, because music was never about expressing one's self, it is about your place within the paradigm of progression in western classical music, because the intellectual construct of historical significance is why music brings to joy to humans.


Let me ask you something. Suppose you and I were both omnipetent, all powerful beings, and we could move through and manipulate time at will. Let's wipe out history going back to, say, 1600. Essentially, let's allow Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, etc. to be born again, and have a clean slate to work with (without their knowledge of course). What are they going to come up with? If we compare their output the first time around with the second time, will we find a lot of similarities or would it be very different? Assume tonality develops in basically the same way. What happens?


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

tdc said:


> Sure, some of the trends in my list are fairly old, but there are still people composing in those styles today, so how is that not a current trend? I think the current trend is this kind of eclecticism, a mix of new styles and old. Some trends evolve for more than just a few decades. Whether one likes this or not it is the way music is being created today, are we supposed to ignore everything that isn't completely novel as being irrelevant to current trends? Music doesn't work that way.


I think of musical or artistic culture more as a river fed by many larger and smaller streams. The largest feeder streams make a prominent and easily noticeable contribution, but as the years pass even their powerful impact is gradually diluted, sometimes slightly, sometimes more significantly, by newer contributors. At any one moment, the cross currents, whirlpools and eddies can be chaotic, but ultimately, the river seems to flow along steadily enough, though with some major bends.
OK, enough of that metaphor. My point is, far from "ignoring everything that isn't completely novel", I suggest the older trends are still with us, to a greater or lesser extent. And it's equally naive to pretend they're totally rejected and forgotten, or that they are still the latest biggest thing.


----------



## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

fluteman said:


> I think of musical or artistic culture more as a river fed by many larger and smaller streams. The largest feeder streams make a prominent and easily noticeable contribution, but as the years pass even their powerful impact is gradually diluted, sometimes slightly, sometimes more significantly, by newer contributors. At any one moment, the cross currents, whirlpools and eddies can be chaotic, but ultimately, the river seems to flow along steadily enough, though with some major bends.
> OK, enough of that metaphor. My point is, far from "ignoring everything that isn't completely novel", I suggest the older trends are still with us, to a greater or lesser extent. And it's equally naive to pretend they're totally rejected and forgotten, or that they are still the latest biggest thing.


Sure, I think for the most part we agree, and I notice what I mentioned in post #50 was essentially said as well in post #47.

I agree it is true that there are people who are way more up to speed on the cutting edge current trends than I am, but I would be surprised if there is anything 'big' that is a current trend right now that does not fit into any of the general categories I listed.

Personally I'm fine with allowing any of the newest trends time to gather some momentum due to their own merits and come to my attention that way, rather than actively seeking them all out. But its fine to take a more active approach too.

I think the answer to the OP is music is in many places at once right now, and going in many different directions at once. People should feel free to go in whatever direction they are inspired to go.


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I think it's close to impossible to predict future trends. I do listen to a lot of contemporary music though I'm not well versed in styles (other than knowing most of the names and having a rough sense of some examples). Music seems remarkably diverse now with electronic, non-tonal, new complexity, a lot of what I'd call neo-Romantic (i.e. tonal music not far removed from early 20th century Romantic music), and more. When I listen, I don't consciously think of the style I'm hearing. I just try to find something in the music that I enjoy. 

I think tonal music has been composed by many people throughout the 20th and early 21st century, but I have a vague sense that more composers are content to produce tonal works than say before 1970. I wouldn't state that strongly since there are simply too many composers and works to follow music closely. 

I don't know if some group of composers will develop "the new dominant style" to unify classical music. I suspect that we're past that time, and music will remain rather varied.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

mmsbls said:


> I don't know if some group of composers will develop "the new dominant style" to unify classical music. I suspect that we're past that time, and *music will remain rather varied.*


That's a certainty. It's pointless to talk about where "music" will go. There is no "music"; there will be no more "classical traditions." The "classical tradition" is over, a relic of a cultural homogeneity which won't return. If art mirrors culture, the mirror has shattered into a million pieces, and it's arguable that none of the pieces is large enough to reflect any great part of our reality. We have to let it go, and just enjoy the buffet of all the centuries and all the cultures spread out before us. It's all right. No one need go away hungry.


----------



## Botschaft (Aug 4, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> There is no "music"


I wouldn't argue with that.


----------



## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

After reading some of this thread.


----------



## Ziggabea (Apr 5, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> there will be no more "classical traditions." The "classical tradition" is over, a relic of a cultural homogeneity which won't return. If art mirrors culture, the mirror has shattered into a million pieces, and it's arguable that none of the pieces is large enough to reflect any great part of our reality. We have to let it go, and just enjoy the buffet of all the centuries and all the cultures spread out before us. It's all right. No one need go away hungry.


You mean it as a negative but this is actually a really positive thing for music. You can't make someone (you) like or appreciate something but it is a very good thing that is being gradually developed in future music-history


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Ziggabea said:


> You mean it as a negative but this is actually a really positive thing for music. You can't make someone (you) like or appreciate something but it is a very good thing that is being gradually developed in future music-history


Why do you think I meant it as negative? I did invite you to the buffet, didn't I? :tiphat:


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> That's a certainty. It's pointless to talk about where "music" will go. There is no "music"; there will be no more "classical traditions." The "classical tradition" is over, a relic of a cultural homogeneity which won't return.


I'd say that idea may have some validity if you add the qualifier, "In our lifetimes". Dangerous as it is to summarize one's own era, it might reasonably said we are currently living in an era of political, social and cultural flux. In fact, a yearning of some for the stability, order and traditions of earlier eras may explain many of the debates in this forum, though I've argued that the old days may not have been quite as stable, ordered and traditional as they now seem. But, stability, order and tradition have never disappeared entirely and have always eventually made a comeback, so I'm not willing to extend your idea into a long-term prediction of the future.
Ed.: If you are actually capable of making such long-term predictions accurately, please contact me privately, as I have some business venture proposals for you.


----------



## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

fluteman said:


> I'd say that idea may have some validity if you add the qualifier, "In our lifetimes". Dangerous as it is to summarize one's own era, it might reasonably said we are currently living in an era of political, social and cultural flux. In fact, a yearning of some for the stability, order and traditions of earlier eras may explain many of the debates in this forum, though I've argued that the old days may not have been quite as stable, ordered and traditional as they now seem. But, stability, order and tradition have never disappeared entirely and have always eventually made a comeback, so I'm not willing to extend your idea into a long-term prediction of the future.


Assuming that you yourself are yearning for a future of stability, order, and tradition, I say: Be Careful What You Wish For. I have a deep suspicion that many powerful world leaders, steeped in ideology or in dreamy memories of an idealized past, similarly yearn for more than a little more order--in music, art and literature, thought itself. That's one of the reasons I find the New Stasis, which within itself holds pockets of stability, order, and tradition, preferable to its most probable alternatives.


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Strange Magic said:


> Assuming that you yourself are yearning for a future of stability, order, and tradition, I say: Be Careful What You Wish For. I have a deep suspicion that many powerful world leaders, steeped in ideology or in dreamy memories of an idealized past, similarly yearn for more than a little more order--in music, art and literature, thought itself. That's one of the reasons I find the New Stasis, which within itself holds pockets of stability, order, and tradition, preferable to its most probable alternatives.


No, I'm just yearning to get through each day more or less in one piece. I think you are absolutely right, idealizing the past can be a very bad and dangerous idea. I don't just wince when people go on about how music used to be better, I wince when people go on about how just about anything used to be better. Although, maybe after a few more years like the current one, I'll become one of those people!


----------



## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

The Good Old Days did bring us this:


----------



## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

Where are we now?

Well, up until now there hasn't been any decent successor for Beethovens' string quartets. That's where we are now!

Still waiting for that, tonal or not.


----------



## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

Goddess Yuja Wang said:


> By the upper middle of the 20th century, we had Serialism, Minimalism, Spectralism, Neo-Classical, etc. Are these styles still current these days? Or is it more like Neo-Serialism, Neo-Minimalism all over again?
> 
> I know it's not always helpful to have this sort of cataloging, but I'm just trying to get a general picture of where we are now with CM styles (or genre or whatever it's called).
> ...
> It seems to me that every possible musical experiment has already been done.


I think the cataloging comes most often after the era ends. In the moment most people have had no idea what era they are in, or that they are in a particular era, and as things change and some intellectuals name the era just ended. Most people, including creative people like artists, composers, writers, have only the murkiest idea of the over-arching social and political structures in which "their own time" is enmeshed.

Reading Stefan Zweig's book The World of Yesterday, one is shocked by how unaware the artistic and literary culture of 1920s and early 30s Vienna was to the coming Anschluss. Of course you know they could not have been aware, but the historical irony is so strong you feel compelled, to yell back in time to warn them.

I also think in the moment, everyone thinks at times that everything has been tried, there is nothing new to be done. I am sure there were Renaissance composers who felt they were the last word in music. Its all been done.

Pushing the envelope forward is a personal boldness, gone about with a kind of blindness to what the future will think. And of all the movements in music, there likely are several attempts at innovation that went nowhere, despite being just as earnestly pursued as the successful developments we know about.

So while I know what you are asking, the very act of asking it is based on a mental trick, an assumed future historical perspective applied to a present day. Not yet in existence and impossible to predict. Only the future knows how history will remember us, and we have very little say in the matter.

But its a very good question to think about nonetheless.


----------



## Botschaft (Aug 4, 2017)

Razumovskymas said:


> Where are we now?
> 
> Well, up until now there hasn't been any decent successor for Beethovens' string quartets. That's where we are now!


Or his piano sonatas, I guess.


----------



## Resurrexit (Apr 1, 2014)

Razumovskymas said:


> Where are we now?
> 
> Well, up until now there hasn't been any decent successor for Beethovens' string quartets. That's where we are now!
> 
> Still waiting for that, tonal or not.


Bartok's string quartets aren't decent?


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

fluteman said:


> I don't just wince when people go on about how music used to be better, *I wince when people go on about how just about anything used to be better.* Although, maybe after a few more years like the current one, I'll become one of those people!


Well now, son, if you were old enough, you'd remember quite a few things that really were better. I'm not exactly ancient, but...

I remember when a phone call was always answered promptly by a human being who knew something useful. "No!" you say. "It can't be true!" Yes, as God is my witness, it's true - and how many hours of tedium, frustration and rage were we spared, how much so-called music were we not tormented with while being told how important our call was to the machine speaking to us, and how many hours or days did we not have to wait for someone to think our call important enough to return it, only to put us on hold and inadvertantly cut us off while trying to find on a computer the answer they were not trained to know?

But that's not all! I also remember:

- when so-called music did not pursue me from one commercial establishment to another, and when shopping was a peaceful, relaxing experience in which there were not fifty brands of vacuum cleaner to paralyze my brain, and there was a floor person nearby who understood vacuum cleaners, knew his stock, and knew what I needed even better than I did.

I remember:

- when it didn't take an hour to drive fifteen miles to work;

- when doctors knew us personally, came to our homes when we or our children were sick, and understood if we couldn't pay the customary amount of money;

- when school children walked miles to school, unaccompanied and without fear of molestation, where they were drilled in phonics, spelling, times tables, and penmanship, and learned how to read and write coherent English - or else!

- when members of different political parties dined together and reached agreements, and when presidents were expected to speak in sentences and not provoke nuclear-armed dictators with crude playground threats;

- when roads and bridges not only got maintained but got built, and members of society who had enough money to make such essential social benefits possible were taxed in order to do it and did not whine that they were being sacrificed to those who deserved to be poor;

- when the morning was full of birdsong, the night was full of magical fireflies and ethereal green moths, you could see the milky way instead of the glare of LED lights, the forests were not burning up, the oceans were not drowning the coasts, and the food we ate was not coated with toxic chemicals, fed growth hormones, and genetically modified...

Sadly, I'm not old enough to remember when cutting-edge contemporary art and music aspired to express the nobler aspects of the human spirit instead of striving to find ever more novel ways of saying less and less. It's when I think about that that I muse about the living experience of those even older than myself, or long gone. I'm just grateful for recordings, which allow me to experience at any moment just how great the great tradition was when greatness was still a thing society believed in and, occasionally, aspired to.

Now, some young whippersnapper is bound to want to come back at me with all the ways life is better now. Yes, I know that modern medicine can keep me alive until I'm barely alive at all. Hooray. At least I now have the privilege (at least in some parts of the country) of putting in writing my desire to be allowed to die, and of hoping that someone will respect my wishes when I can no longer choose for myself. I would only ask that they let me go out with some music written before I was born.

So, son, when you hear old folks talk about the way things used to be, don't wince. You might even ask them to tell you a little more. It's claimed that those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat it. But it may also be that those who don't remember the past will be condemned to wonder why that new and improved square wheel won't turn.


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

*Applause* A fine retrospective of how the baby was thrown out with bathwater in the name of modern life and progress. 

I come from the countryside and life there was probably already about 25 years behind 'progress'. In my twenties I thought this had been a bad thing and I had 'missed out', but later I realised I'd had the good fortune to hang on to a world that so many people now miss (or worse still never even knew).


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Well now, son, if you were old enough, you'd remember quite a few things that really were better. I'm not exactly ancient, but...
> 
> I remember when a phone call was always answered promptly by a human being who knew something useful. "No!" you say. "It can't be true!" Yes, as God is my witness, it's true - and how many hours of tedium, frustration and rage were we spared, how much so-called music were we not tormented with while being told how important our call was to the machine speaking to us, and how many hours or days did we not have to wait for someone to think our call important enough to return it, only to put us on hold and inadvertantly cut us off while trying to find on a computer the answer they were not trained to know?
> 
> ...


I agree wholeheartedly with all of that. However, it is also true that in the "good old days": Many died from diseases now treatable and epidemics now containable, including the great influenza epidemic of 1918, that killed my grandfather's youngest brother at the age of six; polio routinely crippled children for life; workers were routinely killed in workplace accidents and by exposure to asbestos and a wide array of carcinogens, and routinely worked in sub-human conditions; one-third of all pork was contaminated by the deadly trichinosis parasite; "colored" people couldn't attend the same schools or even sit at the same lunch counter as white people; and women were denied the opportunity to pursue many professions.
And that that is just in the great and wonderful USA.
Meanwhile, today, thanks to modern travel, I've stood before the Eiffel Tower, in the Grand Canyon, and in Red Square in front of St. Basil's cathedral. I have hundreds of CDs and LPs of great music stored in a device that fits in my pocket, and I can listen to that music in the Mojave desert or the Maine woods. The internet allows me to have this discussion with you. And as many far wiser than I have pointed out, it's better to live in the present than yearn for the past.
I can't defend telephone hold music, of course.


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

fluteman said:


> I agree wholeheartedly with all of that. However, it is also true that in the "good old days": Many died from diseases now treatable and epidemics now containable, including the great influenza epidemic of 1918, that killed my grandfather's youngest brother at the age of six; polio routinely crippled children for life; workers were routinely killed in workplace accidents and by exposure to asbestos and a wide array of carcinogens, and routinely worked in sub-human conditions; one-third of all pork was contaminated by the deadly trichinosis parasite; "colored" people couldn't attend the same schools or even sit at the same lunch counter as white people; and women were denied the opportunity to pursue many professions.
> And that that is just in the great and wonderful USA.
> Meanwhile, today, thanks to modern travel, I've stood before the Eiffel Tower, in the Grand Canyon, and in Red Square in front of St. Basil's cathedral. I have hundreds of CDs and LPs of great music stored in a device that fits in my pocket, and I can listen to that music in the Mojave desert or the Maine woods. The internet allows me to have this discussion with you. And as many far wiser than I have pointed out, it's better to live in the present than yearn for the past.
> I can't defend telephone hold music, of course.


I'm not much convinced by these 'improvement' arguments. It is actually possible to not be racist or sexist; to research cures for diseases; to improve working conditions; to research technology that may improve life - all of these - without impoverishing education, wrecking living conditions outside gated communities; without devising policy that destroys infrastructure by letting it fall to pieces and offering the latest private company as a solution; without even having a management ideology of no service masquerading as service or pop music ruthlessly piped into every nook and cranny in public places. The one does not flow from the other as some sort of sacrifice of cause and effect. None of these things happen accidentally.

How much this cultural behaviour has upon music is up for debate, but perhaps it does have some effect, especially upon how people experience and consume music and its relationship to commercial culture (which has very much come to dominate culture).


----------



## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Life changes and people get older and grumpier. Music and technology move on and I will continue to move with them whilst holding dear the things I love in music and life. I have no time for old fuddy-duddies and Luddites, harking back to the past with a rose-tinted nostalgia. "in my day Mars Bars were 10 times bigger and a house only cost sixpence"........ Blah blah blah. Le yawn.


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

eugeneonagain said:


> I'm not much convinced by these 'improvement' arguments. It is actually possible to not be racist or sexist; to research cures for diseases; to improve working conditions; to research technology that may improve life - all of these - without impoverishing education, wrecking living conditions outside gated communities; without devising policy that destroys infrastructure by letting it fall to pieces and offering the latest private company as a solution; without even having a management ideology of no service masquerading as service or pop music ruthlessly piped into every nook and cranny in public places. The one does not flow from the other as some sort of sacrifice of cause and effect. None of these things happen accidentally.
> 
> How much this cultural behaviour has upon music is up for debate, but perhaps it does have some effect, especially upon how people experience and consume music and its relationship to commercial culture (which has very much come to dominate culture).


I agree wholeheartedly with all of that, too. But when I spoke about these things with my grandparents, who grew up in an era of horse-drawn street traffic and lived until the mid-1990s, they most emphatically insisted that the good old days are now, even though I think they would also agree with your points.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

fluteman said:


> I agree wholeheartedly with all of that. However, it is also true that in the "good old days": Many died from diseases now treatable and epidemics now containable, including the great influenza epidemic of 1918, that killed my grandfather's youngest brother at the age of six; polio routinely crippled children for life; workers were routinely killed in workplace accidents and by exposure to asbestos and a wide array of carcinogens, and routinely worked in sub-human conditions; one-third of all pork was contaminated by the deadly trichinosis parasite; "colored" people couldn't attend the same schools or even sit at the same lunch counter as white people; and women were denied the opportunity to pursue many professions.
> And that that is just in the great and wonderful USA.
> Meanwhile, today, thanks to modern travel, I've stood before the Eiffel Tower, in the Grand Canyon, and in Red Square in front of St. Basil's cathedral. I have hundreds of CDs and LPs of great music stored in a device that fits in my pocket, and I can listen to that music in the Mojave desert or the Maine woods. The internet allows me to have this discussion with you. And as many far wiser than I have pointed out, it's better to live in the present than yearn for the past.
> I can't defend telephone hold music, of course.


Yes, life is more physically comfortable now - a not unmixed blessing, as two-thirds of us are now obese - and we don't normally die from some infectious diseases that used to kill us, while increasing numbers of us are dying from diseases that were rare before we became so civilized. Women do hold more positions in society, though they are apt to be underpaid and threatened by predation from threatened males. Laws prevent racism from being expressed as freely and harmfully as appalling numbers of us would express it if we could. We can blast Xenakis or, more likely, some sequin-covered country crooner into the ears of fellow campers and forest creatures who presumably don't share our tastes and may not return to their nests and young. And we can travel everywhere and fill the atmosphere with vaporized fossil fuels.

I'm grateful for all of this, and also grateful - or at least hopeful - that I won't be here to see what it all will eventually cost. I'm still rather curious about the music of the future, though. Will the next great tradition originate on some other class M planet?

"Engage!"

P.S. I forgot to mention the fact that my family of five managed to live comfortably in the 1950s on a single income. Try that now.


----------



## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

I need to read everyone's responses to this question, but I believe many, if not the majority of living composers don't think strictly in terms of black/white -- tonal/atonal. They view it as a spectrum of less and more dissonance and feel free to exist in both realms at different times even in the same piece.

Also, I think a relative minority of current composers are attempting to connect with the line of tradition of Beethoven and Brahms.

I don't think there is a clear direction of where music is going, although the leading composers are setting the tone. 

I feel like Ades, Rihm, Adams are the current leading spokesmen.


----------



## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> Well now, son, if you were old enough, you'd remember quite a few things that really were better. I'm not exactly ancient, but...
> 
> I remember when a phone call was always answered promptly by a human being who knew something useful. "No!" you say. "It can't be true!" Yes, as God is my witness, it's true - and how many hours of tedium, frustration and rage were we spared, how much so-called music were we not tormented with while being told how important our call was to the machine speaking to us, and how many hours or days did we not have to wait for someone to think our call important enough to return it, only to put us on hold and inadvertantly cut us off while trying to find on a computer the answer they were not trained to know?
> 
> ...


Yes, but look NOW you can share all this with us on this wonderful digital forum :lol:


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Yes, life is more physically comfortable now - a not unmixed blessing, as two-thirds of us are now obese - and we don't normally die from some infectious diseases that used to kill us, while increasing numbers of us are dying from diseases that were rare before we became so civilized. Women do hold more positions in society, though they are apt to be underpaid and threatened by predation from threatened males. Laws prevent racism from being expressed as freely and harmfully as appalling numbers of us would express it if we could. We can blast Xenakis or, more likely, some sequin-covered country crooner into the ears of fellow campers and forest creatures who presumably don't share our tastes and may not return to their nests and young. And we can travel everywhere and fill the atmosphere with vaporized fossil fuels.
> 
> I'm grateful for all of this, and also grateful - or at least hopeful - that I won't be here to see what it all will eventually cost. I'm still rather curious about the music of the future, though. Will the next great tradition originate on some other class M planet?
> 
> ...


All well put, but I should point out I always wear earphones when listening to music in a public place. I wouldn't want to impose Beethoven string quartets on an innocent, unsuspecting public.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

For me the latest significant thing in contemporary music is microtonality. When you combine that with electronic music and an urge to engage the public to like your music, you have a future!


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

20centrfuge said:


> I feel like Ades, Rihm, Adams are the current leading spokesmen.


_Excuse the heavy trim_.

I'm not sure that these composers do lead any way forward. Adams is working in a way that would not be out of place 90 years ago. This is the reason I voted for Schoenberg as being influential in that poll. His approach - or something that has developed from it - now heavily informs the production of 'serious' concert music. By that I mean music that is taken seriously as contemporary concert music today. Yet there is also a lot of musical activity - composition no less - which takes in many different influences and ideas.

Last night I was at a concert of chamber music and the music played stretched from Hindemith to straight-up serialism to a tango and habanera. All of this sat together in the programme perfectly well. These people sometimes commission works from composers and the result is the same diversity as what they played. I do not expect to see any massive breakthroughs and we are not experiencing one. No one can predict the future and it might well be germinating right now and I just can't see it, but I have quite a lot of contact with the people at the conservatory here and I haven't seen any major shifts in the world of art-music that differ substantially from what is already there and known.


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> For me the latest significant thing in contemporary music is microtonality. When you combine that with electronic music and an urge to engage the public to like your music, you have a future!


It's the current hype-word, but it's not a new idea. Let's mention a relatively unknown composer who died recently: Dr John Eaton and who worked as a collaborator with Robert Moog (of Moog synthesizer fame), He was composing microtonal music decades ago and the idea has been an idea in the area of music/sound synthesis for many years.

This is the thing, today's world is obsessed with having discovered the 'new' thing, the new idea, the new movement and most especially in places where there are none of those things. It doesn't stop people declaring them.


----------



## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

It's such a shame that Grisey died so young. To me he still is the finest of the Spectralists. His last work _Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil_ is utterly devastating emotionally to me.

Have you heard anything by Grisey, Woodduck? Modern medicine may not be able to cure "get off my lawn-itis" but maybe great new(er) music can.


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

eugeneonagain said:


> _Excuse the heavy trim_.
> 
> I'm not sure that these composers do lead any way forward. Adams is working in a way that would not be out of place 90 years ago. This is the reason I voted for Schoenberg as being influential in that poll. His approach - or something that has developed from it - now heavily informs the production of 'serious' concert music. By that I mean music that is taken seriously as contemporary concert music today. Yet there is also a lot of musical activity - composition no less - which takes in many different influences and ideas.
> 
> Last night I was at a concert of chamber music and the music played stretched from Hindemith to straight-up serialism to a tango and habanera. All of this sat together in the programme perfectly well. These people sometimes commission works from composers and the result is the same diversity as what they played. I do not expect to see any massive breakthroughs and we are not experiencing one. No one can predict the future and it might well be germinating right now and I just can't see it, but I have quite a lot of contact with the people at the conservatory here and I haven't seen any major shifts in the world of art-music that differ substantially from what is already there and known.


Great post, and I don't understand why your point is apparently understood and accepted by so few at TC, especially as it relates to Arnold Schoenberg, but also as to modern and contemporary music generally. There is a large "Schoenberg ruined music" contingent here, and also a large "Schoenberg took music down the wrong path that fortunately is now being rejected and forgotten as everyone returns to tonality" contingent, and even some who seem to advance both of these seemingly contradictory views.

What I see and hear is exactly what you point out. Schoenberg's influence does remain with us. But as he himself came to understand late in his life (apparently to his bitter disappointment), his ideas were never universally or even largely accepted as the only or best way forward. He actually made personal appeals to other composers in this regard, including Hindemith, whom you mention, and who emphatically rejected him. He was especially bitter (and jealous?) of Stravinsky's success, and I think with good reason, as Stravinsky at least arguably had an even greater impact on 20th century music. And certainly the influence of both very much continues today.


----------



## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

Resurrexit said:


> Bartok's string quartets aren't decent?


I'll give Bartok another go and then reconsider!


----------



## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

Razumovskymas said:


> I'll give Bartok another go and then reconsider!


Also Schubert and Schoenberg, as far as cycles go. There's also many great individual ones (Fauré, Ligeti No. 2, Dutilleux _Ainsi la nuit_, etc.) but Beethoven is still at the top of that genre for me.


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Chronochromie said:


> Also Schubert and Schoenberg, as far as cycles go. There's also many great individual ones (Fauré, Ligeti No. 2, Dutilleux _Ainsi la nuit_, etc.) but Beethoven is still at the top of that genre for me.


Same here, but for individual works I'd add Debussy, Ravel, Berg's Lyric Suite, and Wolf's Italian Serenade to the list of all time great string quartet standards. And Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn for multiple works. I think the string quartet's great flexibility is the key to its longevity. Even the electronic age hasn't killed it off entirely.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

fluteman said:


> Same here, but for individual works I'd add Debussy, Ravel, Berg's Lyric Suite, and Wolf's Italian Serenade to the list of all time great string quartet standards. And Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn for multiple works. * I think the string quartet's great flexibility is the key to its longevity.* Even the electronic age hasn't killed it off entirely.


Another key to its continuing appeal to composers is the paradoxical fact that it's easy to write a good piece for a homogeneous ensemble and find musicians to play it, while to write a really great piece without the surface appeal of multicolored instrumentation is a challenge to one's power of invention and command of form.


----------



## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

fluteman said:


> Same here, but for individual works I'd add Debussy, Ravel, Berg's Lyric Suite


Of course, thus the "etc.". I didn't mention Haydn and Mozart as they asked for post-Beethoven works.


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Another key to its continuing appeal to composers is the paradoxical fact that it's easy to write a good piece for a homogeneous ensemble and find musicians to play it, while to write a really great piece without the surface appeal of multicolored instrumentation is a challenge to one's power of invention and command of form.


Yes, that's part of it. But a string quartet can be quite multicolored, with a cello and viola as well as two violins, and the tonal variety each string instrument can achieve individually, especially with the various bowing and plucking techniques. Another key is the small number of instruments. With a large string orchestra, the timbre of the individual instruments is mostly lost and the sound is much more homogenous. It's no accident that various types of avant garde string quartets, many incorporating jazz, rock and all sorts of current genres, remain successful today. (For those of us who are adventurous when it comes to such things, anyway.)


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

fluteman said:


> Yes, that's part of it. But a string quartet can be quite multicolored, with a cello and viola as well as two violins, and the tonal variety each string instrument can achieve individually, especially with the various bowing and plucking techniques. Another key is the small number of instruments. With a large string orchestra, the timbre of the individual instruments is mostly lost and the sound is much more homogenous. It's no accident that various types of avant garde string quartets, many incorporating jazz, rock and all sorts of current genres, remain successful today. (For those of us who are adventurous when it comes to such things, anyway.)


There are even more parts of It. The appeal of bowed solo strings crosses styles and centuries; there simply are no more expressive instrumental sounds, strings having a resinous tension and a sensitivity to the finest nuances of articulation, in both respects reminiscent of the human voice. Moreover, the coloristic possibilities of solo strings is one of the challenges to a composer's creative powers, not only in the different ways strings can be touched but in the way subtleties in part-writing stand out, undisguised by richer orchestration (similar to the way nuances of design stand out in black and white graphic art). As compared with previous quartet writing, Beethoven's late quartets are remarkable in the fresh spacing and texturing of simple diatonic harmonies, and apart from the occasional use of effects such as pizzicato and sul ponticello they don't depend on unusual experiments in sound production to make their striking effect.


----------



## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

We have this feeling that a new era dawns when everything that can be said with the "language" of the old era has been said. I don't think this is true, and for sure it can't be proven.

In other genres of music this is often not the case. The three chords of rock and roll say many many new things all the time.

My point is that I believe it could be possible to go back to a tonal era, and write something new and bold and perhaps more accessible to the general music audience.

I think of Prokofiev's Classical Symphony, which doesn't so much push a genre envelope, but certainly is a new statement within the old language.

I have no idea why this is never done. Certainly there is some incentive and challenge, to take on the old tonal restrictions and create something new and wonderful. 

Maybe there are folks doing this that I don't know about. If there are, please let me know. I'd be all over that like white on rice.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

JeffD said:


> We have this feeling that a new era dawns when everything that can be said with the "language" of the old era has been said. I don't think this is true, and for sure it can't be proven.
> 
> In other genres of music this is often not the case. The three chords of rock and roll say many many new things all the time.
> 
> ...


I agree that it's possible to write good tonal music. People still do that, don't they? But do you mean something more specific, such as writing in the manner of a past era? Are you saying that there's more to be done in Baroque or Classical styles?


----------



## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

Well both really. 

I think there is more that can be written in those styles, like some could pick an era, the early Beethoven for example, and restricting himself to no musical innovations that become normative after that era, someone could still write beautiful moving fulfilling great genius non derivative music. Take it into a different, not romantic, direction.

But I think my bigger point is that tonality isn't dead or used up.


----------



## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

JeffD said:


> But I think my bigger point is that tonality isn't dead or used up.


I don't think anyone believes that.

Writing in old styles though? I don't know, I find it hard to believe that a very creative (let's just say good) composer would want to do that.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Chronochromie said:


> I don't think anyone believes that.
> 
> Writing in old styles though? I don't know, I find it hard to believe that a very creative (let's just say good) composer would want to do that.


I agree. It's theoretically feasible to restrict ourselves to the conventions of a historical style, but as people of our own time and place we're unlikely to want to, or to be able to produce much more than an uninspired imitation if we try. The really vital art of an era doesn't originate in that way, and when great artists - Brahms and Stravinsky, say - do turn to past eras for inspiration they nevertheless produce something fresh that couldn't really have been written back in the day.


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I agree. It's theoretically feasible to restrict ourselves to the conventions of a historical style, but as people of our own time and place we're unlikely to want to, or to be able to produce much more than an uninspired imitation if we try. The really vital art of an era doesn't originate in that way, and when great artists - Brahms and Stravinsky, say - do turn to past eras for inspiration they nevertheless produce something fresh that couldn't really have been written back in the day.


I've never understood why this seems to be so difficult for so many here to understand. People occasionally try to write a play (more or less) in the style of Shakespeare, for example, but it's seldom taken, or meant to be taken, very seriously. And Mozart's music is routinely imitated -- in a superficial way. I once met someone who played in a professional string quartet that specialized in doing pop songs, Christmas carols, etc, in Mozart's style. You could probably still find their CDs with a google search. But those are novelty items, usually made with a wink and a smile. Coming anywhere near recreating Shakespeare's or Mozart's art on a deeper level would be all but impossible. Even someone with something approaching their talent would be hard-pressed to even approximate their now centuries-old perspectives.


----------



## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> I agree. It's theoretically feasible to restrict ourselves to the conventions of a historical style, but as people of our own time and place we're unlikely to want to, or to be able to produce much more than an uninspired imitation if we try. The really vital art of an era doesn't originate in that way, and when great artists - Brahms and Stravinsky, say - do turn to past eras for inspiration they nevertheless produce something fresh that couldn't really have been written back in the day.





fluteman said:


> I've never understood why this seems to be so difficult for so many here to understand. People occasionally try to write a play (more or less) in the style of Shakespeare, for example, but it's seldom taken, or meant to be taken, very seriously. And Mozart's music is routinely imitated -- in a superficial way. I once met someone who played in a professional string quartet that specialized in doing pop songs, Christmas carols, etc, in Mozart's style. You could probably still find their CDs with a google search. But those are novelty items, usually made with a wink and a smile. Coming anywhere near recreating Shakespeare's or Mozart's art on a deeper level would be all but impossible. Even someone with something approaching their talent would be hard-pressed to even approximate their now centuries-old perspectives.


I am not talking about emulating a style, or re-creating an historical artifact, or putting on a historical perspective. That is, I agree, almost by definition impossible. I am talking about being creative within a set of rules more or less defined by a period in musical history. Push the boundaries of course, but from that starting point. Push different boundaries than were pushed back then, and push them in different ways.

Of course we only live in the era we live in and what ever we produce will be a product of our era. No question about it. I am just saying that great creativity and great art can come from restriction, and as any set of rules is somewhat arbitrary, couldn't it be interesting to pick the musical rules as taught in year xxxx as a starting point.


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

JeffD said:


> I am talking about being creative within a set of rules more or less defined by a period in musical history. Push the boundaries of course, but from that starting point. Push different boundaries than were pushed back then, and push them in different ways.


I suspect that if you restricted yourself to e.g. Beethoven's late period and then pushed the boundaries, you'd probably end up in the same post-Beethoven milieu. What has already gone would probably unconsciously (or even consciously) influence it.

Maybe I'm being negative? I just can't imagine what anyone would do that wasn't some sort of polystylism.


----------



## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

I gather that JeffD wants new music that is tonal and catchy, like The Beatles but then classical instead of pop. I think it is a legitimate question why such music doesn't exist; for some reason around the 30's of the 20th century music split into 'pop' which is tonal and catchy and 'serious' which is never catchy or even listenable to the average listener...


----------



## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I post from utter ignorance, as I do not/have not made it my business to attend to recorded film scores, but might not film music--either offered as is or somewhat reworked/rearranged by its cunning composer, be a way forward. I know that I have been for scores of years and still am often entranced by the intro music to British TV series. This is by definition music of today yet has a certain timelessness in my ear. Something quite good could be wrought from much of it.


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Agamemnon said:


> I gather that JeffD wants new music that is tonal and catchy, like The Beatles but then classical instead of pop. I think it is a legitimate question why such music doesn't exist; for some reason around the 30's of the 20th century music split into 'pop' which is tonal and catchy and 'serious' which is never catchy or even listenable to the average listener...


From the 30s? Tonal 'classical' music never went away. For example, the 'light music' genre was one of the most popular forms of music during the 40s, 50s and early 60s. Long before Dance Band music of the 30s or Beatlemania ever arrived there were already several entire traditions of music that existed alongside concert music. They've converged and separated several times.

Art music, being 'art' music (and wherever it happens to be) will always push the boundaries.


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

JeffD said:


> I am not talking about emulating a style, or re-creating an historical artifact, or putting on a historical perspective. That is, I agree, almost by definition impossible. I am talking about being creative within a set of rules more or less defined by a period in musical history. Push the boundaries of course, but from that starting point. Push different boundaries than were pushed back then, and push them in different ways.
> 
> Of course we only live in the era we live in and what ever we produce will be a product of our era. No question about it. I am just saying that great creativity and great art can come from restriction, and as any set of rules is somewhat arbitrary, couldn't it be interesting to pick the musical rules as taught in year xxxx as a starting point.


Then you should be happy, JeffD, since the "musical rules" as taught in the 18th and 19th centuries are still very much taught today, and still play a dominant role in much of the music written today. If you'd like composers to avoid any trace of 20th or 21st century influence in their work, that may be harder to pull off.



Agamemnon said:


> I gather that JeffD wants new music that is tonal and catchy, like The Beatles but then classical instead of pop. I think it is a legitimate question why such music doesn't exist; for some reason around the 30's of the 20th century music split into 'pop' which is tonal and catchy and 'serious' which is never catchy or even listenable to the average listener...


"NEVER catchy or even listenable"? Really? Ever go to a movie? What about John Corigliano's score for The Red Violin or Michael Nyman's score for The Piano? Those are "serious" composers. What about Arvo Part's Spiegel im Spegel, which as been used in several movies? Did you listen to Rainbow Body by American composer Christopher Theofanidis, a work commissioned by the Houston Symphony that has become a popular concert choice, that I linked to above? Essentially tonal, but also with elements of medieval chant. I say, never say never.


----------

