IDM Mailing Archive

Ali said:

quoted 4 lines For instance, i

> For instance, i > think the Baroque period was(i'm probably off a bit here) around 100 > or 150 years(?)...this would be unheard of in this day and age as a > time period for ONE musical style

Chris sez: Things have changed since then. It is absolutely essential today to be innovative, and I think the reason is the mass media. It's important to note that in those days there were no recordings, no radio. This means: 1) Most people never heard any music *ever* besides folk songs sung by their freinds, maybe played on a recorder or a lute. Only a few priviliged, urban people ever actually got to hear new music performed by orchestras. 2) Even if you were the biggest, most wealthy music patron in Europe, if you wanted to hear a certain classical music peice you'd have to find an orchestra/opera company who had rehearsed the thing and a concert hall with a free night. You'd only really ever hear music a few times a week if you were lucky, and usually the program was decided by someone else. Imagine if the only music you ever heard was when you went to concerts/nightclubs. How well-informed would you be? 3) I can't say for sure, but I would imagine only about a hundred half-decent musical peices were performed by orchestras each year, plus maybe a few hundred more peices for quartets and chamber ensembles. There wasn't much music out there to listen to anyway. 4) Out of all the works from that 150 year period, today we still perform only a few dozen of the works which were composed. Most of the other works were probably pretty forgettable. 5) If you were an extremely well-educated composer, you would likely only have heard a few hundred peices in your life. And many of them you would only have heard once. Your influences were very few and very similar. How could you innovate when you were exposed to so little material? Today we are lucky to have recorded music. We (those of us who are wealthy enough to own cd players and such) are fortunate to be able to give ourselves the pleasure of music anytime anywhere. And I think that the availability of tons of music on the radio, tv, and recordings has changed us. We can hear music from all over the world. We can hear the latest music from young composers. Because of this, musicians are driven to be innovative. You wonder why nobody makes classical music anymore? Because you can be twenty years old today and quite reasonably have heard almost every major peice of music composed before 1900. But there's no way in a whole lifetime you could possibly listen to every record published in the last month. With the invention of mass media, the development of the arts has accelerated to light speed. The average joe can recognize and hum along with dozens of classical peices just from watching warner brothers cartoons. Its everyday stuff. Theres too much stimulation! Too much precedent! Thus the modern urge - innovate! -CF