Tradition vs. Progress - Mutually Exclusive?

[m1469]

Forcing myself to watch the Opera Le Cid by Massenet ... 3 hours of singing about a society of individuals and the scenarios they encounter who resemble a period of time that largely no longer exists.  Kings, Queens, complicated love, and insults on the family.  Ok, maybe there are some aspects which relate.

It got me stirring about concepts I've been thinking about for awhile, of course.  A part of it is "Tradition" and it's hard to explain all of the thought-avenues which led me from watching an opera to writing a post about tradition and progress on piano street.  It dawned on me, while there is much that I have and do respect, appreciate, and value about tradition, I also value, appreciate, and respect progress and evolution just as much.

While Tradition and Progress may not actually be mutually exclusive, it seems like their use and how they are thought of often is.  Is Tradition really meant as a way to help humankind progress into a new level of being, or is it actually meant to keep humankind living the same way it always has?  What would make it function in one way vs. another?

Of course, I would like to blend tradition with progress.  Tradition as a stepping-stone to progress; and progress with roots to humankind's past.  While I am thinking of this in general, I also think of this in relation to music.


What do you think?

[j_menz]

In a slightly different context, Sir Isaac Newton said, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants". IMO that is the relationship.

[iansinclair]

Tradition -- if it is allowed to do so -- can become very limiting.  If someone, or some group, insists on slavishly following some tradition or other, I think that that can be very detrimental.

However, on the whole, it seems to me that tradition serves as a very useful -- if not deeply needed! -- regulator for progress, helping to damp out, if you will, the more frivolous extremes of progress.  I find it very useful to enquire as why we have always done something this way or that way -- that's tradition -- when examining a new way of doing something, rather than flying off with every new idea that comes along -- and usually incorporating aspects of each.

Not very well put, but perhaps you can see what I mean...

[ted]

I see a distinction between change and progress, in that progress, by implication, has a strongly positive component. Change by itself merely results in the directive, "Let's all push the acclerator even if we don't know where the car is going", as J.B. Priestley aptly put it. In the arts, however, unlike in life, continually reaching out for the new has no particularly serious negative consequences that I can see. By and large, it seems perfectly possible to pick out the best of both worlds, traditional and experimental, and create as one wishes.

[m1469]

Thank you to the three of you!  Actually, Ian, that is quite well put and helps me think a bit.

There are three main areas that I have been thinking about with regard to tradition:

1.  Religious
2.  Music
3.  Social/Cultural

Of course those are or can be quite tied together.  I have quite a few thoughts about all of that, but those thoughts are not fully at the surface and a bit difficult to make heads or tails of them just yet.

Using my own life and experience as a means for gaining some kind of perspective on the rest of life, one of the biggest conundrums for me is how to reconcile my deep desire to study concepts about music and life, many of which include tradition, but to not have any visible place within the support system of tradition itself.  As an adult learner of the piano/music -a very non-traditional student by Classical standards- Classical music tradition has not exactly extended its hand to me.  Well, it has and it hasn't.  

As a vocalist, I have come to accept that it is possible I may have one of the more unique voices of the Century.  But tradition gives me very little, if anything, to stand on currently.  It doesn't matter how unique a voice may be, it doesn't matter how well one might sing traditional music, what matters is whether or not a person grew into the musical world in what is currently considered the traditional way, and I didn't.

I also have a true and real desire to be a blessing to the world with my music; pianistically, vocally, compositionally, and pedagogically.  Let's say tradition gave me an opportunity to visibly express this - is tradition really set up in a way that allows something non-traditional to truly come near the hearts of its followers?  As in, I have come to realize over this last year/eternity that more than any other thing, whatever I do in my life, I want it to have substance.  The substance of depth, vitality, connectedness, life, truth, etc..  Even if I became a famous musician and that with plenty of money but did not feel substance in what I was doing, that's not a life I would aim for, either.  My actual, primary aim in life in general is for substance, and I wonder - does this lead me to or away from tradition, and specifically the tradition(s) of Classical Music?  If it is the latter -away from it- and if individuals within the tradition are repelled by me because of my aims, I find that quite curious.

These are not complete thoughts and it is not actually meant to be about me - it is just that, I aim to take my own life as objectively as possible, and learn from it as best as I can, and living this experience has brought about some interesting perspectives.