@mh-7635 said:
"But beyond that its hard to see how classical music evolved to where it is now. Not even today, but even going back to 1913 music changed so much...when Charles Ives' finished his fourth of July "
hi Anand,
One thing not mentioned in the evolution of concert music that has led to its demise is rhythm. The famous 'emancipation of notes' was inevitably follwed by the emancipation of the beat - a paradigm first exemplified in works like the Rite of Spring. I agree with John Adams when he says that pulse is a great unifier in music. It is something for a listener to hang their hat on as they perhaps listen to an unfamiliar harmonic language and it undoubtedly helps them steer an aural course through a piece.
The development of rhythm beyond regular pulse is I believe, one of the strong alienating factors in modern classical concert music - and yet - it is also one of the most exciting to me as a composer. The freedom to explore the linearity of time subjectively and without a need for a functional metrical role is a heady mix as I see it, even though in my own work I do not exploit it as much as I might imply here.
Rhythm is the one aspect in music that is deeply connected to the body, the physical world, and to time. Rhythm has its roots in dance and movement. It is possible to intellectualize harmony and melody, as common-practice theory, serialism and set-theory has done, but I don't believe it's possible in regard to rhythm. Stravinsky understood this, which is why he could write ballets. Other composers, such as Boulez and Babbit do not understand this.
The 20th century has given us a rich pallet of resources from which to draw upon. Composers such as Barber, Nielsen, Britten, Copland, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Prokofieff and Mahler, to my mind, found the right balance between tradition and innovation. Pure innovation utterly disconnected from tradition usually does not produce worthy music, and music that is so utterly tied to tradition, other than folk music, is usually not much more than blatant plagiarism. I think music that expresses absolutely nothing about the time and place in which the composer is living is insincere music. I am not saying the composer is an insincere person, I am saying the music is insincere because it could have been written, say, 200 years earlier and nobody would notice. Obviously I am not speaking of film music, which is an entirely different matter.
In my music, I attempt to write music that is sophisticated and challenging, but also accessible and listenable. There's a comment made by a musician about Mozart's music that went something like, "Mozart's music is so simple a child can delight in it and so profound and subtle that the most learned musician can appreciate it". I cannot think of a higher ideal to strive for. The trick is to do it honestly, in other words, the music should have three levels of expression, not necessarily in this order, but a blend of these three components:
1. The time and place the composer is living
2. The unique personality of the composer
3. The underlying reality of harmony and order that governs the cosmos (Good taste?)
Where music is going? Unless we embrace an entirely new tuning system and adopt scales that utlize 1/4 tones and smaller, I don't think music will change all that much. It will change, and certainly new timbres will always be coming on the scene, but since we humans, meaning our brains and our hearing capabilities, do not change from one generation to another, but only through evolutionary and biologic changes that take 10s or 100s of thousands of years, the real changes will be in whether human consciousness can become more sensitive to all the various musical elements we already employ.
One of the evolutions occuring since the end of the common-practice period (around 1900) has been the increasing use, both melodically and harmonically, of 12 tones rather than 7. I don't mean necessarily dodecaphonic, but rather the usage of all 12 tones of the western chromatic scale, which is more complex (and harder to hear and sing) than diatonic melodies. I think this trend will probably continue.
Jerry