1 Sep
2010
1 Sep
'10
10:50 a.m.
Excerpts from fons's message of 2010-08-30 22:39:15 +0200:
On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 11:06:33PM +0530, Rustom Mody
wrote:
If everything already was, nothing is new, how can anything not be
eclectic? I heard however that Goethe said basically the same thing,
everything that can be already is. I guess 'new' just gets 'smaller' all
the time. And everything new just derives from what was there before. I
think that never changed, it's just a matter of perception, and I guess
this development went faster than the general human perception developed.
--
Philipp
--
"Wir stehen selbst enttäuscht und sehn betroffen / Den Vorhang zu
und alle Fragen offen." Bertolt Brecht, Der gute Mensch von Sezuan
1. The great western classical tradition which
started around Bach (or a few
hundred years earlier depending on how you look at/hear it) suddenly died
around 1900.
Classical music degenerated into varieties of insanities like serialism etc
and pop/rock etc emerged over the next 50 years out of what was earlier
simple folk music.
That's quite an extreme way to put it I'd say. The 'great western classical
tradition' is by no means a continuum, it is divided in periods that each
had their own foundations and idioms. There are composers bridging the gaps
of course, but that doesn't much change the basic historic structure.
But yes, the early 20th century was surely a turning point in Western science
and culture - mathematics and physics went through a crisis and came out
stronger than ever, and in the arts - not only music - everything was turned
over and the outcome of this is still unsure. Much of this was questioned
in the final quarter of the 20th century (the postmodern movement), without
IMHO offering anything in exchange. What we have today is some form of
'eclectism' that has its place in contemporary society but in itself has
little power to survive.