Future music

[opus10no2]

Let's discuss possibilities, probabilities, hopes and fears for music in the future. 

[retrouvailles]

It has been said that music will go the way of Mauricio Kagel, who has been called, by Gramophone magazine, one of the few composers of today who will survive the test of time. Other than that, I don't really know. We might have a revival of neoromanticsm in a way never explored before. Who knows. Only time will tell.

[pianistimo]

what does extreme heat do to pianos and pianists?  i'd say that pianos will become easier to make out of recycled plastic (excepting the soundboards - which will be made of hardened sawdust).  cheaper to make and buy. people will use them to cool off their rooms by putting them in the center of a room with the middle section of the piano being filled with water - and a fan above the water.  also, it will eject little mists around the piano through holes which are aimed at the pianists face and neck and arms so they can play for a few hours without worrying about heat induced memory loss.

also, we will lose our music stands to computerized digital scanning and automated page flipping stuff.  in fact, we may also have some sort of breakthroughs with piano benches.  what has happened is that pianos themselves have greatly improved - but the benches have gotten worse and worse.  now - benches are being reconsidered for sturdiness as well as fine tuning the adjustability without destabalizing the entire body when at the desired height for small people.

music itself will become a matter of whose brain you choose to input into your own.  we will be able to copy files, so to speak (just kidding) and just lightly touch an area of someone else's head and basically borrow files.  it will then be proven that talent means nothing.  in fact, the idea of competitions will become extinct.  everyone will play the piano.  including pets.  cats will be playing 'fur elise.' 

[moi_not_toi]

I'm horribly afraid of the possibility that there IS no future for music, or at least "classical" music in the label sense.
I truly believe that a second dark age is creeping up on us. If that's the case, chances are that music programs of most sorts will close down, and anything written after 1950 will be destroyed as far as music goes.

That's always been my fear, but it was more in the district of the future of literature, which would be everything before 1950 is destroyed (and with that crazy lady in GA trying to get Harry Potter removed, I wouldn't be surprised if censorship came into this country)...

Just a phobia, probably not going to happen, though.

[counterpoint]

I don't believe, that the "music of the future" will be much different than the music of "today". The really worthy music will not vanish, so there can only be added some more, worthy compositions. The music history has shown, that indeed the best music survives, while uninteresting and mediocre compositions vanish in the archives. In 300 years there will be still played the great works of Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Stravinsky, Berio and some music, we can't imagine yet.

Okay, perhaps pianistimo will contradict here - most of the great composers will roast in hell then 

[ramseytheii]

I don't believe, that the "music of the future" will be much different than the music of "today". The really worthy music will not vanish, so there can only be added some more, worthy compositions. The music history has shown, that indeed the best music survives, while uninteresting and mediocre compositions vanish in the archives. In 300 years there will be still played the great works of Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Stravinsky, Berio and some music, we can't imagine yet.

Okay, perhaps pianistimo will contradict here - most of the great composers will roast in hell then 

You're so right.  Except on one point, and I only wish you were right: unfortuantely bad music from the past no longer languishes in the archives, gathering dust.  Turn on any classical music radio station during the day and prepare to be assaulted with the hands-down "Worst of the Baroque."  This is a side-effect of the also nausea inducing historical movement, which in order to justify its existence and beef its repertoire had to dig up the most notorious Baroque tripe.

One would think listening to clssical radio in Amerika, that this is the kind of music that is played all along.  After all, what you hear on pop radio is what you also see people buying at the store.  Unfortunately this is not the case.  How often do you hear live performance of Albinoni concerti?  Obscure Handel overtures?  And what do these names mean to you: Castrucci, Torelli, Vanhal, Heinichen (with a little editing, Heineken, it could mean a lot! :>)?

Well these are all names that are being played day in and day out on the radio, which is obviously totally out of touch with the reality of classical music, and probably dependent solely on audience polls, or as I like to call them, "prole polls" that say Baroque music is the most "relaxing" or whatever.  I wish they would ask me about it.

Walter Ramsey

[Bob]

My classical radio station plays "Top 40 Classical Music."  They do the same pieces over and over.  You get really good at identifying a piece instantly though.  All "soothing" classical music too.

Anyway.  I think technology will open things up.  Making music with technology.  More access.  More ability to compose, but the results will be done by a computer, generating its own sounds that are unique or imitate real instruments.  People who don't know how to read and write music can compose.  More flexibility.  More access.  More ease.  But I don't think the numbers of people will shift much.  People will have access, but won't necessarily want to sit down and compose if they just want listening enjoyment.

[ramseytheii]

My classical radio station plays "Top 40 Classical Music."  They do the same pieces over and over.  You get really good at identifying a piece instantly though.  All "soothing" classical music too.

Anyway.  I think technology will open things up.  Making music with technology.  More access.  More ability to compose, but the results will be done by a computer, generating its own sounds that are unique or imitate real instruments.  People who don't know how to read and write music can compose.  More flexibility.  More access.  More ease.  But I don't think the numbers of people will shift much.  People will have access, but won't necessarily want to sit down and compose if they just want listening enjoyment.

Just an anecdote, for years Karlheinz Stockhausen was a strange-bedfellow celebrity, appearing on the Beatles Yellow Submarine cover, and generally being an anti-conformist icon (until he called September 11th the greatest work of performance art ever to be conceived). 

While he had that status, he often gave interviews in pop-music magazines.  One such magazine played him the records of Aphex Twin, eletronic music, which he dismissed by saying he had been doing the same thing 50 years ago.  He was also interviewed by Bjork.

Walter Ramsey

[soliloquy]

I think in the short run Algorithmic and Post-Impressionist music is going to become the fashionable form of composition.  In the long run, no way to tell really.

[moi_not_toi]

As far as style?? That's what we're talking about???
Oh, well in that case, it's quite apparent that over-ornamentation will be back, since NO-ornamentation is new, there'll be a musical revolution, completely recreating music...blah blah blah, random notes played too few times in no specific order WELCOME BACK TO SERIALISM GUYS!!!!!!!

which is good, because it didn't get a long enough run.

[ted]

I have one or two thoughts about it.

The hopes are dead easy, the concrete predictions difficult. We have access to a diversity of sound, method and style which has never occurred before. The internet and simple recording technology bring this diversity to the ear in a few minutes. I would hope to see, in consequence,  a tremendous liberation of the creative individual musical spirit; a world where every man is, in some sense,  his own Beethoven; a world where children were made aware of their right to enjoy and create music after their own fashion, without the odious heft of stress, grind, competition and comparison, which at present leads to a population of a few mentally hidebound successes and a heap of musically inhibited failures.

Specifics ? Soliloquy is right about algorithmic composition. Despite one or two very clever forays, that is still very much in its infancy. Once brains come along capable of melding the two areas of logical and artistic fluency - and I don't think that has quite happened yet, or at least not in precisely the right way -  our perception of music will take a quantum leap forward. No way, however, will the personal instrument disappear. Short of our brains actually being wired up to something, the transporting yoga of creating sound while at one with an instrument is here to stay.  In particular, I see the future of the piano as being secure for a long time yet.

I think visual notation, that is to say marks on paper approximating sounds, while no doubt carrying on under the economic momentum of centuries, will gradually become less important as a personal means of musical communication; already, a digital piece of music, a computer file, is essentially its own notation. Coupled with a likely upsurge in improvisation as a primary means of musical creation this will imply faster and freer ways than the purely visual of transmitting ideas from one person to another.

[Bob]

Maybe since communication is... possible like it is, the styles won't be so cut and dry as in the past.  Baroque - Classical - Romantic.  Then things start branching out with "modern."  Everyone is not doing the same thing now and I would imagine those different tracks (styles) of music will keep developing and reacting and getting more sophisticated along their own line until they burn out for awhile.

Maybe a rise in the creation and acceptance of music created by artifical intelligence when that gets moving along more.

[ctrastevere]

Music, like anything, moves in "waves" so-to-speak. There is nothing that will ever stay consistent in the music world as much as change. So we can expect to see many different styles that will undoubtedly emerge as the innovative musicians of the day experiment, and try out new ideas. Some of them will be nothing but just that -- an experiment. One that may be remarked at in a music history book someday, but will most likely not evolve into anything. Other ideas may take on an entire new genre of their own. Again, many of these will remain popular for a while due to the curiosity factor, and then die out as other musicians gradually try to take the idea to the extreme, or come up with something that is even more outrageous that will draw attention away from the other ideas. Then, most of these ideas will all fade out into obscurity.

This has been the nature music, since the beginning, though it hasn't been until the 20th century that people really began to try to experiment as much as they could.

I personally can't ever imagine a day when Classical music will die out. It hasn't by now, why should it ever? I believe some things really are immortal in that sense. However, I don't think that people should limit themselves to what the world of Classical music has to offer in the future. You'll be missing out on a hell of a lot of good music.

I try to buy a good five new CDs every month. Usually, I'll get them in five different genres. For instance, the last five CDs I bought were Stravinsky, Chess (the musical), Boston, Ornette Coleman, and Michael Jackson. Did I like everything on every CD? No, but I liked most of it.

If we want the future of music to be a good one, my suggestion is that we continue to expand our horizons and support the musicians who really are trying to introduce something new to the world. And when in doubt, we can always make our own music. I don't think we've run out of good ideas yet.