# Progress in music



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Does music "progress" in any real sense? I have read of the three main ancient Greek playwrights, oldest to newest:

- Aeschylus showed men as they could be, both in nobility and in evil
- Sophocles showed men as they are
- Euripides showed men at their worst.

Your opinion: Is there any parallel with Western music?


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

yes there is.


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

According to the avant-garde waves: More electricity, more chaos, less sanity and rules = Progress.

So based on Ken's comment, Aeschylus is my favorite kind of philosopher-writer. Sophocles has tendency toward the moral grayness, and Euripides is the psycho-cynic kind.



> Is there any parallel with Western music?


Recent Chinese classic music and Persian classic music are there and are indeed interesting.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

The extreme avant-garde appears to me to be more about doing something for the sake of it. Progress that ain't. From silence to outright noise, and everything in between electronic farts and egg beaters. Only this category, I would not consider as progress.

But thankfully, I have come across other wonderful contemporary composers writing contemporary classical music that don't verge on such alienating extremities.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

I think that music definitely moved from being more expressive of beauty as an ideal towards being expressive of psychological states of mind, and also becoming anthropomorphic. I don't know if there are clean signposts to this, but music has had stages of thought and development, just like everything else...


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I think growth is more descriptive of what really happens. Music grows in the number and kinds of instruments, grows in its audience, grows in varieties of styles, grows in the acceptance of more and more remote sonorities, etc. But "more" and "better" have two very unrelated meanings.


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

It progresses in the sort of trivial, value-free sense that Stravinsky could steal from Mozart but not vice versa.


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## MichaelSolo (Mar 12, 2013)

Is there a progress in music? Is there a progress in human civilization?

These are two equivalent questions, and the answer to the first follows from the answer to the second: music is but another way for humanity to understand (as opposed to rationalize) itself and the world around. Did the humanity do a lot of progress in that since the ancient Egypt?

I personally feel there was "progress", that is, improvement and development of the understanding of the world by an *average* human. Therefore, as a consequence, there probably was a progress in depth and quality of "average" music of today as compared, say, to ancient Greece time.

That is NOT to say absolute depth of the comprehension of the world by a human improved in the last several hundred years; more likely, the opposite have happened.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Classical music neither "progresses" nor declines . It simply evolves . There have been great works in every century of music of which we have record , as well as a great many which are mediocre or worse .


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

Des Prez showed us heaven
Monteverdi showed us art
Mozart showed us beauty
Haydn showed us the way
Bach showed us god's music
Beethoven showed god our music
Wagner showed god who's boss
Schubert showed us how to sing
Strauss showed us how to dance
Liszt showed off
Mendelssohn showed us our history
Theremin showed us the future
Edison showed how to hold it
Schoenberg showed us the formula
Berg showed us its application
Stravinsky showed us the bomb
Scriabin showed us the explosion
Debussy showed how we float
Pettersson showed how we sink
Shostakovitch showed how we endure
Cage showed us how to listen
Ligeti showed us how to think
Stockhausen showed us how to think like an alien


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## MichaelSolo (Mar 12, 2013)

quack said:


> Des Prez showed us heaven
> ...Stockhausen showed us how to think like an alien


Beautiful! Are you the author of this??


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

Throughout history we have seen highs and lows in all the art forms... For example, Classical Athens showed us a high in a few things, most notably philosophy probably, Elizabethan England in playwriting, 19th century Russia in novel writing...

It is my opinion that 18/19th century Germanic culture has showed us a high in music.

Music has evolved concepts... But it has also forgotten many, and in fact the past 200 years, according to some, in music history have been characterised far more by a _loss_ of musical heritage than a gain in new musical ideas (though without the value judgements often implicit in such words). The 'postmodern' revolution currently going on is probably most radical in this respect, deliberately rejecting the high-modernism of the Darmstadt School etc.. Often composers invent individual styles _ex nihilo_.


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## MichaelSolo (Mar 12, 2013)

I agree. The price to pay for the proliferation of music is reduction of the music-maker competency. Everybody is so damn different and beautiful in his/her own right, and you just don't understand nothin, even though the music sucks. So be it. 

Out of many composers on this forum, only two (!) managed to put together a 10-measure contrapunct related to own name.. What else is there to talk about?


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

quack said:


> Shostakovitch showed how we endure


didn't he actually show how we collaborate?


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Over the recent history, there have been "changes" in music, certainly. I would not compare those changes with scientific progress, though. Art, or more precisely, the mechanisms for producing art (e.g., atonal after tonal) or even the way we contemplate art (e.g., a more open minded attitude, or even the contrary), can change because of the following things: i) new ways for expressing the same emotions of always ("emotions" in a very broad sense here, not only sadness, joy, melancholy, etc., but also the subjective imaginary); ii) ways for expressing things never expressed before with art. In either case, this "progress" always bifurcates and diverges, it grows and forms a non organized whole (for example, although atonalism is theoretically linked with tonalism, we can't say that replacing tonality with atonality is a "progress", it's just a change). On the other hand, scientific changes are an authentic "progress", because they are convergent, they have a clear direction forward, towards the scientific truth, the new verified theories are always more refined, contain the results of the previous theories. So, if we view new developments in music as isolated things, certainly there's no progress (for example, integral serialism wants to avoid precisely all traces of previous music, as Boulez said, he wanted an "international music", a "cosmopolitan music", the "music from the present", which must be devoid of references to the past and to geographical boundaries). But, if we consider music's or art's goal as the search for the maximum and diverse ways of expression, then there's a progress, since we have now to our disposal a much wide variety of ways of expression. So, unlike science, whose most recent theory represents the most refined form of knowledge, in art, the most recent development only represents one more way of expression, it's the full body of ways discovered through history what constitutes progress in art (so, I would not say that atonalism is a "superior" way for expression when compared to tonalism in the same sense that I do say that general relativity is a superior theory of gravity when compared to the newtonian one; also, I would say that now we are more "advanced" since we have tonalism and atonalism to our disposal).
Also, the same thing that drives us to new scientific research, drives us to finding new ways of artistic expression: because we are curious, because it is interesting, because it is intellectually stimulating, because it is exciting, and, most importantly, because human intelligence is inquisitive and nonconformist by nature. 
Conservative attitudes when there are still new things to discover are a negation of the human intelligence and of a "petit bourgeois" type.
So, I consider this progress, advance, change, or whatever as one of the most interesting things about art, jointly with its intrinsic capability for exciting the subjectivity of the mind, which, I think, is the defining property of all arts.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

MichaelSolo said:


> Beautiful! Are you the author of this??


Yes, just a sudden virulent inspiration, don't worry not contagious.


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## hello (Apr 5, 2013)

Have their been any significant musical landmarks recently? The last significant thing I can think of was the first piece of computer music.


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## Guest (Apr 5, 2013)

Number one, significance is not really the kind of thing that is instantly recognized. Sure, Le Sacre had a big, old riot (mostly about the dancing) and a warmly received concert performance shortly thereafter, but was it seen, in 1913, as a significant musical landmark?

I think the desire to know current landmarks conflates two incompatible things, so will always be an unfulfilled desire. People who hate new music (philosophically only as the actual experience seems to be quite sparse) will blame the unfulfilment-ness on the music itself, of course, but everyone else will simply recognize the contradiction and get on with their lives.

Number two, the "extreme avant-garde," according to a person who knows very little about it, "appears to me to be more about doing something for the sake of it." Well, I guess it could. A little more knowledge would lead one to revise that opinion, however.

Number three, according to another person who dislikes what he disapproves of without very much experience of it or knowledge about it, "according to the avant-garde waves: More electricity, more chaos, less sanity and rules = Progress." Of course, none of the actual people* who actually make the actual music would say this at all. According to them, progress is impertinent. Only "making good sounds" in the words of an older "avant garde" composer who died around the turn of this last century. But it makes, or appears to make, such a critically incisive sound-bite, that you see this kind of assertion asserted over and over and over again. The facts don't matter, only the repeated assertion. For, after all, repeat an assertion enough times, it becomes true!

*what are these "wave" things?


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Number four, so long as *only* *one* sole listener on this planet enjoys that particular type of music, it must be worthy enough in some measure or another, and it is the complete failure of the rest who don't get it.


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## Guest (Apr 5, 2013)

Whatever helps you sleep at night, I guess.

Otherwise, liking or disliking keeps coming up over and over again, too.

Here's what one person recently said to me (I don't remember if they were quoting or not--I think they were) that the responsibility of a listener going into a concert hall is to pay attention.

Not to like or dislike, but to pay attention. To try to engage with the music, I would add, and engage with it on its terms, not yours. Somehow--I think I'm getting this right--that perspective seems politically and/or morally suspect to certain people. Not sure why, but there's a strong sense in all discussions about new art that someone is trying to "get away" with something. And we don't want to encourage that type of behavior!


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

hello said:


> Have their been any significant musical landmarks recently? The last significant thing I can think of was the first piece of computer music.


... and noise music. I actually do give credit to these noise artists for being courageous enough to expose themselves to liking noise and they got the nerve to sell albums and hold concerts etc.


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## MichaelSolo (Mar 12, 2013)

some guy said:


> ...To try to engage with the music, I would add, and engage with it on its terms, not yours. Somehow--I think I'm getting this right--that perspective seems politically and/or morally suspect to certain people. Not sure why, ...


Sorry, I for one always engage with music on my own terms. It is just who I am. Because music is there for me, not another way around.

But my terms are good and simple - no worry . All I need is that the music would resonate in me by evoking deep and enjoyable emotions. I do not want to be just annoyed, startled, puzzled or shocked: those are primitive basics of no interest.

I do not want to be amused by a variety, richness, originality or uniqueness of sound: perephrasing Woodie Allen, that music hits right into ears, but does not penetrate behind the ear drum.

I do not want to be entertained by somebody's intellectuallizm either: even though a piece of good music almost always has a rational structure behind, my interest in that structure is about as large as in a motion of a ballerina cartilage and thybia during the performance. By its nature, the music is suited best not for rationalising and intellectualising - that is my conviction. There is a particular harmony in complicated math, which benefits the latter. Not another way around.

So, you see, I do not really care what label is associated with the piece of music - "avant-garde" or "barocco" (Bach was the first avant-gardist, just listen to his multi-faceted instrumental Musical Offerings), as long as it does not leave me cool.


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## hello (Apr 5, 2013)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> ... and noise music. I actually do give credit to these noise artists for being courageous enough to expose themselves to liking noise and they got the nerve to sell albums and hold concerts etc.


Noise music started almost fifty years before computer music


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

some guy said:


> ...Somehow--I think I'm getting this right--that perspective seems politically and/or morally suspect to certain people. ...


Thank you for clarifying that moral principle.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

KenOC said:


> Does music "progress" in any real sense?...Your opinion: Is there any parallel with Western music?


I think it would be disingenuous to say that Western music has not progressed from Gregorian chant to Mahler. Notation has progressed, instruments have progressed, recording technology has progressed, and so has musical thinking.

Do the critics of progress mean to say that Beethoven did not progress from his early to late period? Of course, it's all beautifully crafted music, but did he not gain insight and wisdom through experience? Surely the critics do not mean to say that Man does not "progress" as he gets older, in wisdom if not in physical power.

If so, this is an extremely pessimistic view. I think it has a "cut-off" point, sometime before WWII, and this attitude belies an alienation, a desire to escape from the modern world.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Weston said:


> I think growth is more descriptive of what really happens. Music grows in the number and kinds of instruments, grows in its audience, grows in varieties of styles, grows in the acceptance of more and more remote sonorities, etc. But "more" and "better" have two very unrelated meanings.


I agree; development in music is like tree growth, with side-branches. It's not linear.

Regarding "modern" music, and the recurring accusation that it "destroyed tonality," Schoenberg saw his music as continuing the "chromatic" way of thinking, a late version of tonality, which he was already using before he developed the "system." Bartok, Stravinsky, and others were already thinking this way as well. So for me this reinforces the view of Schoenberg as a tonalist.

Which brings me to my penultimate point: What is really meant by the term "chromaticism"? The gradual addition of non-diatonic notes happened anyway, so we see a direct connection to tonality. In Strauss'* Metamorphosen *and Schoenberg's *Pelleas,* we see more chromaticism, but the functional meanings of the harmonies becomes more ambiguous, or having multiple functions/meanings, or no function at all in the CP tonal sense. So "chromaticism" means not simply "more notes", but also a lack of functional clarity in a CP tonal sense.

When harmonic meaning began to become more ambiguous and vague, this means that the composers working within the CP tonal framework were beginning to exceed the limits of what tonality was intended for, and was capable of. Tonality is a system with limits, after all. It was not "destroyed," but simply discarded by musical thinkers who had exceeded its limits.

Remember, the listeners who like CP tonality as in Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven _like it because it is a system with limits,_ falling within certain parameters. To say that music does not 'progress' beyond those limits is to restrict musical thinking, like cutting the limbs from the tree. That's very presumptuous.

Ok, any "pruning is good for the tree" jokes? :lol:


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