How do you think a composer creates a new musical era?

I

Very carefully. ;)

No i dont think so. I think musicologists do.

Seriously

Do you actually think Beethoven did not know the

What tenor10 said.

I don't think it's just one composer alone who makes a push for a new style (unless your name is Beethoven). It tends to be more of a collective effort amongst composers to move from one style to the next. Agree? Disagree?

Do you actually think Beethoven did not know the

agree.

Yes...I seriously think Beethoven didn't know the 'new path' he was into. It was just the natural progression of music. Historically, decades - hell, centuries defined musical development. Nowadays, with the printing press, recording capabilities, internet - the proliferation of information moves as such high velocity that music develops at a much higher rate - months even.

Did Beethoven decide to usher in a new era in music? Did Dizzy Gillespie choose to 'invent' a new genre? No...you can find counter-examples and transitional figures throughout history. It's just music: constantly evolving and developing in an infinite myriad of directions.

:hmmm:

Yup, that's how it happened! :)

great, then there is nothing more to say in this thread :)

Ah, but Schoenberg declared the twelve note technique to be German music's easy passage into a 100 year period of dominance, or words to that effect. Beethoven was certainly avant-garde in his day, but he wasn't quite that deliberate in his actions...or was he?

(Mainly trying to play devil's advocate here...this thread can't possibly be over by the 10th post :P)

"Did Dizzy Gillespie choose to 'invent' a new genre? No..."

No? I'd vaguely thought the beboppers were trying to do just that. OK – building on the styles of Roy Eldridge ... and non-trumpeters Charlie Christian, Art Tatum, Earl Hines, Coleman Hawkins (in particular his "Body and Soul"...)

Swing was getting a bit stale; there was a natural dividing line (aka WWII) and a new generation of feisty young cats ... Anyhow, I'd always been under the impression that was an intentional move.

(Any folk here from that era??!!)

My thread mean

"Did Dizzy Gillespie choose to 'invent' a new genre? No..."

No? I'd vaguely thought the beboppers were trying to do just that. ... Swing was getting a bit stale ... Anyhow, I'd always been under the impression that is was an intentional move.

Intentional, yes. But not intending to 'create a new musical era'. The beboppers simply kept pushing the music - again, I believe, the natural evolution. Ornette didn't expect to revolutionize modern improvised music in 1958, it just happened. Likewise, where Beethoven (et al) were certainly the avant-garde, I don't think they chose to be there.

I dunno.

My thread mean

I'm not even sure you can say Beethoven created a new era. Sure, he did some things first that many after him imitated, and of course he influenced generations of composers. But his actual line of development that went to his late string quartets wasn't followed. The composers after Beethoven simply took some of his ideas and combined them with their own ones, but without actually continuing where Beethoven stopped.

I think it's by a different process each time; sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious, often out the impossibility of the previous genre to be extended unless it's totally dismantled (possibly what happened at the end of the baroque and romantic periods).

But it's certainly never one composer who does it, and they won't know if they've made a breakthrough until musicologists sort out the naming. There are plenty of composers who tried to break musical boundaries, but just hit dead-ends. Gesualdo, for example.

If we really want an example of a composer who knowingly started a new era and didn't fail at it, Monteverdi would be the most obvious choice for me.

If we really want an example of a composer who knowingly started a new era and didn't fail at it, Monteverdi would be the most obvious choice for me.

Very true. He was one of the original advocates of the "New Music Treaty", wasn't he? Or am I thinking of somebody else? Another person who comes to mind is Palestrina, who pretty much saved the world of contrapuntal writing.

Another person who comes to mind is Palestrina, who pretty much saved the world of contrapuntal writing.

I never knew it was in danger. . .

OK, so the original question was- HOW does a composer go about creating a new musical era?

The best answer I can give is- every once in a while, someone does something inventive, then another composer comes out and does something more, repeat, repeat, repeat... until it becomes something worthy of being its own genre- thus creating another era some time or another.

It's hard to say whether or not a composer would mean for this to happen. Stravinsky (though he didn't exactly pioneer any new eras to my knowledge), when he wrote his Rite of Spring, claimed that he wanted "to give them hell." Whether this means he meant for it to be a revolution, or he simply did something out of the ordinary isn't clear.

Consequently, I don't think Beethoven knew what he would do. Note that while his music is somewhat revolutionary for the time, it still follows many patterns of the music of the time. Now if he really meant to knock people off their feet, don't you think he would've tried harder to write something a little less... structured?

There's my two cents... maybe even dollar... into the topic.

I think Beethoven knew EXACTLY what he was doing. Beethoven knew, and constantly publicly acknowledged that he was a musical pioneer and that he was one of a kind.

I doubt there are any two composers more influential than Mozart and Beethoven collectively to what we know and love today, and I say this not only because of their individual influence, but that they were two very connected composers, like a team.

Um... Schoenberg? Josquin? Grido de Arezzo? Verdi? Benjamin Britten? Webern? Bartok? JS Bach?

Beethoven was peerless and was the most influential factor of tonal music after his time (and non-tonal music, in many cases), but there were many, many other powerful and inspirational composers that I would say had more effect on music overall then Mozart. Mozart wrote within an era. He didn't usher one in.

If you want to see HOW a composer ushers in a new era or thought in music, compare Beethoven, Shoenberg, and Palestrina, as they all helped usher in new eras of music.