# Can you hear the music of the future?



## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

Do you have ideas in your head about the way a future music will sound?


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Yes. I know I should say a little more.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

No. Well maybe but I don't like the trend I'm seeing.


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## Boldertism (May 21, 2015)

Before or after the Western world commits suicide?


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

Boldertism said:


> Before or after the Western world commits suicide?


Yes......No!

This message is less than 15 characters.....Maybe!


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Semuta Music: _Dune_: http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Semuta_Music


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## Guest (Apr 9, 2016)

I'm sure it will be a natural continuation as it always has been, so all we have to do is look at the absolute newest styles.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

I do hope the old school comes back.

Geniuses people like Mozart and Beethoven amongst others


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## Guest (Apr 9, 2016)

Pugg said:


> I do hope the old school comes back.
> 
> Geniuses people like Mozart and Beethoven amongst others


I think you'll find once you're dead, that's it.


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## Guest (Apr 9, 2016)

dogen said:


> I think you'll find once you're dead, that's it.


Not to mention, of all the zombie apocalypse media available, not one of them has ever portrayed the zombies as particularly passionate about common practice tonality. They can't ALL be wrong, can they?


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Music of the future? Crap.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I think composed art music of the future will likely return to offering more traditional tonal models of composition. It has been about one hundred years of "modern" music development since the turn of the early decades of the 20th century. Now I think there is an awakening to more traditional aesthetics.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

dogen said:


> I think you'll find once you're dead, that's it.


I don't have _any other_ illusion than your suggesting


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

I've been writing it for a while...

But seriously, I think we have to look at western culture in general. The idea that a retrograde motion would occur, that we would effectively "undo" the past hundred years or so, is entirely possible. The current trend, which is ─ for better or worse ─ towards egalitarianism, and which operates by the erosion of boundaries between and the levelling of perceived cultural value of things which were once considered separate, will probably continue for a while yet, but it leads perhaps to something quite different.

Post-modernism, which essentially began this process of erosion, is just about dead, and people are now looking for what David Foster Wallace* calls the "new sincerity." In his 1993 essay "E Unibus Pluram" Wallace characterises this as an essentially dead-in-the-water (from a critical perspective) movement of conservative reactionary revolt, its main features being an abundance of naivety and a lack of fear regarding the cliché, both of which run counter to post-modern sarcasm and self-awareness.

But why is this what the west is looking for? Could it be that there is a desire, perhaps because western governments have seen fit to plunge us into a period of constant war in the Middle East, and because there is a general feeling of unease concerning the movements of vast bodies of people across the earth, and ─ at the most extreme ─ a sense that western culture is nearing its death throes after a grand period of cultural hedonism, for an escape to a state of innocence? Is this a rebuking of the march of globalisation, in which everyone is everywhere all the time; or is it simply an attempt to find "eudaimonia," an inner spiritual happiness which Socrates said is fuelled by virtues such as justice and courage?

New sincerity, when applied, would possibly give rise to an art that could fulfil those Socratic criteria, one which assumes for itself responsibilities to justice social, personal, emotional, and intellectual, but how does this relate to music? Music, being the only inherently abstract art form, and despite the best efforts of cadre after cadre of programmatists and emotionalists, has a nigh-on impossible task set out for it if it is to live up to this eudaemonist ideal. However, if the equivalence drawn by conservative thinkers between that which is virtuous and that which preceded modernism can be sufficiently impressed upon newer generations of composers, the retrogradation of music may be secured.

If such comes to pass, the musical landscape will not truly assimilate the values of new sincerity, but it will pretend to them nonetheless, giving rise to a chimerical "perfect art" which will tend more toward Soviet socialist realism and anti-formalism than it will a bold new affirmation of western musical aesthetics. I don't wish to position myself as a doomsayer, because I don't think it is possible to know what will happen twenty, fifty, one-hundred years from now, and in any case my goal is, as ever, to investigate potentialities rather than to prognosticate their coming, but if we are to reaffirm our musical culture and thinking, we cannot bury our heads in the sands of the past and call it a new golden age.

*he did not invent the term, but he is perhaps its most significant proponent in the west


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## Euterpe (Apr 3, 2016)

I think it maybe depend on the taste of future people.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

I have heard the future and it is a state of permanent eclecticism, where neo-everything and multi-vectored experimentation reign forever. The era of stylistic consensus ended sometime around 1900 and since then the only people sure they knew the path to the future were delusional or devoid of imagination.


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## kartikeys (Mar 16, 2013)

Like this:


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Euterpe said:


> I think it maybe depend on the taste of future people.


Good first post, welcome by the way


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## Poppy Popsicle (Jul 24, 2015)

I think the future creators and listeners of music(s) will accept that every idea involving the manipulation of the sonic materials available to us can be considered as "music-to-our-ears".


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

@Crudblud: interesting post, and it's good to see that people are giving such issues some considerable thought. My own view continues to be that The New Stasis will obtain in many of the arts--especially non-cinematic pictorial art, and music--until some powerful unifying agent or force (politics, religion, some other ideology, using either persuasion or terror) sets large populations off together on some common path. So until that happens, the Music of the Future and the Art of the Future will be whatever you want it to be; something for everyone. Literature and cinema, though, will continue to tell stories, because though people may be persuaded that they really like all sorts of different musics and look-at-quickly-then-turn-away pictorial art, they do mostly draw the line about what will pass as acceptable in literature and cinema. They will probably still be reading the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Essential: Leonard Meyer, _Music, the Arts, and Ideas_


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## Poppy Popsicle (Jul 24, 2015)

Strange Magic said:


> [...] The Music of the Future and the Art of the Future will be whatever you want it to be; something for everyone. [...]


Yes, a global supermarket offering a wide choice of "cultural products". Why not.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

ArtMusic said:


> I think composed art music of the future will likely return to offering more traditional tonal models of composition. It has been about one hundred years of "modern" music development since the turn of the early decades of the 20th century. Now I think there is an awakening to more traditional aesthetics.


If there has been, I haven't seen any evidence of it. Some people are turning to diatonicism, but this is being used in a specifically non-tonal way.

Anyway, why celebrate what in many cases is an infantilization of a fine art and a move towards cultural amnesia?


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Mahlerian said:


> Anyway, why celebrate what in many cases is an infantilization of a fine art and a move towards cultural amnesia?


What is, for example, "an infantilization of a fine art and a move towards cultural amnesia"?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Dim7 said:


> What is, for example, "an infantilization of a fine art and a move towards cultural amnesia"?


Some of the more superficial pieces you hear from composers today, which not only don't build on the traditions of the past, they seem completely oblivious to them:


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

That Dorman piece is interesting. I think if it was orchestrated in a different way, with much less of a brass heavy bass feeling, the music would be better sounding, more futuristic even. It sounds muddy, but I'm listening to it on my laptop. It also sounds rushed. I wouldn't want to give it a grade, and I don't like criticizing living composers. I think orchestration may be where some aspects of future music lies. There often isn't much treble and midrange distinction, and maybe composers are writing that way, but obviously orchestrating something can make anything different.


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

I can feel them... they're like electric farts!


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> Some of the more superficial pieces you hear from composers today, which not only don't build on the traditions of the past, they seem completely oblivious to them:


I think your assessment of this piece and composer is far too generous. Oblivious would be forgivable - maybe. This sounds like the ripoff of superficial elements of Schnittke, Stravinsky, Paul Buckmaster and who knows who else, mixed into a pretentious and manipulative overall design. Not to mention gong abuse, bell abuse, ostinato abuse. Ugh. 20 minutes I won't get back. Thanks a lot Mahlerian.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I'll go as far as to say that what we think of as the classical music tradition is near its end.

The music of the future will be characterized by such a pervasive blurring of cultural, stylistic and genre boundaries that to speak of a singular "music" will be meaningless.


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## sloth (Jul 12, 2013)

I guess there won't be a single authority to tell us what music will be in the future. Each single track will be a genre of its own


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

Can the future hear the music of you?


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## sloth (Jul 12, 2013)

maybe there won't be any difference between composer / performer / listener.


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## TwoPhotons (Feb 13, 2015)

I wonder if future technology might be involved in the progress of music. While computer synthesis of sound is something that has been around for quite some time, computers might end up playing a larger role in music performance. I sometimes imagine an orchestra made out of entirely synthetic instruments, and what that might sound like/what pieces might be performed. Maybe this is a bit paradoxic, though - human performers playing on "fake" instruments.

Perhaps technology will play a part in listening to music as well? We already have CDs, vinyl etc. but what kind of listening devices will we have 1000 years from now? 60-speaker surround sound systems, with music composed so that the music changes based on the position of the listener? (If I recall correctly this has already been experimented with, but it will be interesting to see if anything greater comes out of this. Say, if every home will be fitted with such a surround system, there will be incentive for composers to come up with some interesting stuff)

Also, one thing that has got me thinking is how future composers will find inspiration for their music, because as time goes on, the variety of musical styles only gets larger. 1000 years from now, there will be _so_ many styles out there, musical output will surely get more unpredictable. It's mind-boggling to think what people will come up with.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

regenmusic said:


> Do you have ideas in your head about the way a future music will sound?


No and I am not sure I want to know how future music will sound as I am firmly embedded and comfortable in the classical age.


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

Like this:


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> Can the future hear the music of you?


It can if it wants to, but at the moment no one is beating down my door.


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## seven four (Apr 2, 2016)

I thought I was until I got my teeth fixed.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I got tired of the music of the future some time ago.


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

In the future there will be no comedians

because we'll always be laughing inside that we are in the future


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

The future isn't what it used to be: (Paul Valéry)


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

To expand on my earlier post, in ten minutes I will put on a recording of Ligeti's "Clock and Clouds." I can hear it in my head already.

If however we are discussing music composed in the future, I believe this may be a self adaptive type of music, similar to what is used in video games these days though far more complex, a music that alters itself to suit the mood of the listener by monitoring blood pressure, hormone and endorphin levels, etc. The composer will set up the parameters. So no, we will not be able to hear that. Each performance / recording will be a little different. That is but one many paths music may take.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Yes you can hear it ...

A collection of Klingon music


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

More music of the future. The first-ever all-electronic soundtrack, by Louis and Bebe Barron.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> I got tired of the music of the future some time ago.


Yes, hopefully the music of the future will sound exactly like Mozart. Then I could say we as a species have evolved!


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

It'll be World Classical Music, which is essentially milk toast.


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## Ilarion (May 22, 2015)

Gosh,

JSBach and Messiaen will always blaze the trails lightyears ahead of us mere mortals...


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

*


Woodduck said:



I got tired of the music of the future some time ago.

Click to expand...

*Its a 'tense' conversation, to be sure.

But in my Book of Grammar Glamour, the flamboyant 'past' beats the phlegmbuoyant 'future' every time.


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## Ilarion (May 22, 2015)

Marschallin Blair said:


> Its a 'tense' conversation, to be sure.
> 
> But in my Book of Grammar Glamour, the flamboyant 'past' beats the phlegmbuoyant 'future' every time.


Yo, whatsup with the Lisa Whelchel avatar? Did she not epitomize the "Valley Girl" epithet? My wife says that it is a put-down to ladies everywhere with that american tv-series Lisa Whelchel was a part of...

Back on topic:

Music of the Future or The Future of Music...Now, methinks I threw down the gauntlet with JSBach and Messiaen..So be it...I'd love to see other composer juxtapositions by the highly influential braintrust of Tc...


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

> *Ilarion: Yo, whatsup with the Lisa Whelchel avatar? Did she not epitomize the "Valley Girl" epithet? *


God no.

As any deb knows, Blair Warner is the ultimate spoiled, narcissistic, _____ (rhymes with "rich").

She swats down valley girls with her 'croquet mallet.'

I'm just kidding though.

She secretly hates that her perfection makes others feel less than perfect.

Naturally, I can relate to her.


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## brucknerian (Dec 27, 2013)

I sometimes wonder if musical creativity will come more widespread and scattered and mixed in with other things, rather than being the province of small concentrated groups of highly competent, highly trained "experts".

Perhaps technology will open up new tools for creativity which are easy enough for the masses to use.

Just as we have decentralised blogging and micro-blogging replacing newspapers/books, social media replacing (or at least augmenting) traditional media, accounting software replacing accountants, etc., perhaps we will have new tools of music creation enabling almost anyone to compose and/or perform.

Not necessarily replacing the classical establishment, but moving in alongside it, even sharing some of its space.


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## Ilarion (May 22, 2015)

Marschallin Blair said:


> God no.
> 
> As any deb knows, Blair Warner is the ultimate spoiled, narcissistic, _____ (rhymes with "rich").
> 
> ...


Something about relating to narciss.............Are you totally sure about even kidding about...Ahhh...Ummm?

Please brew yourself your favorite cup of tea and make yourself comfortable and really reflect on what you have shared...Ok?:angel:

Back on topic:

What are the underlying reasons for a composer's music being relevant to a future time frame?


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

Ilarion said:


> *Something about relating to narciss.............Are you totally sure about even kidding about*...Ahhh...Ummm?
> 
> Please brew yourself your favorite cup of tea and make yourself comfortable and really reflect on what you have shared...Ok?:angel:


I'm serious as a heart attack.

When Marsch Monsoon comes to town, you know it.


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## Ilarion (May 22, 2015)

Marschallin Blair said:


> I'm serious as a heart attack.
> 
> When Marsch Monsoon comes to town, you know it.


Oh please, don't go and have a cardiac arrest on me, ok?


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

*


Ilarion said:



Oh please, don't go and have a cardiac arrest on me, ok?

Click to expand...

*
You misunderstand me, Ilarion.

I don't 'jump' the boom-boom gun.

I 'am' the boom-boom gun.


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## Ilarion (May 22, 2015)

Marschallin Blair said:


> *
> *
> You misunderstand me, Ilarion.
> 
> ...


Ok, I misunderestimate you


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

*


Ilarion said:



Ok, I misunderestimate you

Click to expand...

*From one _enfant _to another, your_ terriblesse_ is far greater than mine could ever be.

- I salute you.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

All the other cultures of the world will flourish but the western culture, along with our music, will DIE!!!1

Seriously though, there's only one theory of culture that makes sense, and that's Hegel's dialectic of history. That's the only way we can simultaneously give respect to tradition and acknowledge progress.


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## Ilarion (May 22, 2015)

Marschallin Blair said:


> From one _enfant _to another, your_ terriblesse_ is far greater than mine could ever be.
> 
> - I salute you.


Hi Blair,

I hope there are no hard feelings between us now - Being in "facetious mode" the other day prompted me to take life not so seriously. Let me reassure you that I have a high opinion about you - Someone whom I would like to invite for tea and crumpets :tiphat::angel:


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

Xaltotun said:


> All the other cultures of the world will flourish but the western culture, along with our music, will DIE!!!1
> 
> Seriously though, there's only one theory of culture that makes sense, and that's Hegel's dialectic of history. That's the only way we can simultaneously give respect to tradition and acknowledge progress.


Yes, Kierkegaard was an interesting thinker, and he's the one who is largely credited for doing away with Hegelianism. I think there are problems in how we understand history and our own present. For instance, Kierkegaard largely didn't realize what he was doing to "Christendom" when he attacked it in that famous newspaper debacle. If he could only see what happened in the next 150 years maybe he would have changed his tune. Kierkegaard was looking to some kind of perfection on Earth, perhaps he thought his writings would bring about some kind of change.

But back on target, I'm enjoying this thread and I do think that music evolves, not saying so much that it always only improves, but it changes and those changes would be interesting to pretty much anyone from any time in history, when they are good changes. I think good music has a type of physiological reaction in people, perhaps something to do with the brain, waves, chemistry and so on. Of course, one's mood has a lot to do with when something is good, or, even one's phase in life.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Maybe a lot more can be done with live manipulation of (electronically generated) sound. An entire orchestra using nothing but their hands to control every detail of an enormous soundscape. Or better: their minds.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Florestan said:


> No and I am not sure I want to know how future music will sound as I am firmly embedded and comfortable in the classical age.


Same here ...........


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## Ilarion (May 22, 2015)

regenmusic said:


> Yes, Kierkegaard was an interesting thinker, and he's the one who is largely credited for doing away with Hegelianism. I think there are problems in how we understand history and our own present. For instance, Kierkegaard largely didn't realize what he was doing to "Christendom" when he attacked it in that famous newspaper debacle. If he could only see what happened in the next 150 years maybe he would have changed his tune. Kierkegaard was looking to some kind of perfection on Earth, perhaps he thought his writings would bring about some kind of change.
> 
> But back on target, I'm enjoying this thread and I do think that music evolves, not saying so much that it always only improves, but it changes and those changes would be interesting to pretty much anyone from any time in history, when they are good changes. I think good music has a type of physiological reaction in people, perhaps something to do with the brain, waves, chemistry and so on. Of course, one's mood has a lot to do with when something is good, or, even one's phase in life.


Ah, a brave soul mentions Kierkegaard...The Danish State Church(Lutheran) could not stomach Kierkegaard, who wanted to reform that corrupted Church. Kierkegaard, a prophet whose time has come. Thank you, regenmusic.............


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

If I could, I'd be writing it.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

*


Ilarion said:



Hi Blair,

I hope there are no hard feelings between us now - Being in "facetious mode" the other day prompted me to take life not so seriously. Let me reassure you that I have a high opinion about you - Someone whom I would like to invite for tea and crumpets :tiphat::angel:

Click to expand...

*You're really ' ' shock-ing, ' ' Ilarion.

Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Vanity is a formidable armor though.

We can take it. _;D_


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

*


regenmusic said:



Yes, Kierkegaard was an interesting thinker, and he's the one who is largely credited for doing away with Hegelianism. I think there are problems in how we understand history and our own present. For instance, Kierkegaard largely didn't realize what he was doing to "Christendom" when he attacked it in that famous newspaper debacle. If he could only see what happened in the next 150 years maybe he would have changed his tune. Kierkegaard was looking to some kind of perfection on Earth, perhaps he thought his writings would bring about some kind of change.

But back on target, I'm enjoying this thread and I do think that music evolves, not saying so much that it always only improves, but it changes and those changes would be interesting to pretty much anyone from any time in history, when they are good changes. I think good music has a type of physiological reaction in people, perhaps something to do with the brain, waves, chemistry and so on. Of course, one's mood has a lot to do with when something is good, or, even one's phase in life.

Click to expand...

*I think Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer had some great jibes at Hegel; but I think Karl Popper positively buried him in his _The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol. II: Hegel, Marx, and the Aftermath._

When Popper was analyzing Hegel's elliptical mumbo-jumbery on his theory of sound, I was actually laughing out loud so hard that I had to put the book down.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

MarkW said:


> If I could, I'd be writing it.


You can always try.
Lots off people think they can get away by bragging trough live :devil:


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