Music's Limits?

Do you think there are still novel concepts in music? That true innovation is possible? Please show examples if possible.

I find it very frustrating to compose sometimes because, 100 years after the end of tonality's monopoly, 50 years after the advent of computer music, 30 years after heavy experimentation with sound as opposed to music per se, and 20 years of pure noise, I end up feeling like music has so few places left to go...

Thoughts?

Of course there is new territory in music, but my opinion is that if you can't write music because you are paralyzed with the thought of composing something thats already been done, you are extemely short-sighted. Music is about self-expression, pushing the limits is just a way of finding new ways to express oneself.

As far as the avant-garde goes. There is a new way of tuning called Bohlen-Pierce tuning that I find very interesting.

You can find information on this tuning at The Bohlen-Pierce Site

If you want, you could try composing in this new tuning scale.

Both responses are right. Look harder. The same can be said for writing a story. Basically it has all been done before. It doesn't, however, prevent many from writing great stories that touch and influence others.

That this thread is idiotic.

Look harder.

Thanks for your helpful reply :)

Of course there is new territory in music, but my opinion is that if you can't write music because you are paralyzed with the thought of composing something thats already been done, you are extemely short-sighted. Music is about self-expression, pushing the limits is just a way of finding new ways to express oneself.

I'm not paralyzed... just frustrated. I'm hard-pressed to think of a genre that is extremely new (ie, past 20 years) that's wholly revolutionary... The only thing that comes to mind for me (and I'd love to be shown different) is white-noise styled stuff like Merzbow; and that owes far too much to the futurists of the 1920s. Its just frustrating that there comes a point when macro-development stops: when a plethora of styles running the gamut of sound production exist.

As far as the avant-garde goes. There is a new way of tuning called Bohlen-Pierce tuning that I find very interesting.

You can find information on this tuning at The Bohlen-Pierce Site

If you want, you could try composing in this new tuning scale.

Well, it dates to 1972, with the first compositions during 1987-89, which is new, I guess... Sadly the site doesn't transfer the tuning into a theoretical Hz frequency, which means I have no earthly idea what they're talking about on first glance. It seems interesting, but its a synthetic scale - I'd argue a new application, but the concept is by no means new.

Both responses are right. Look harder. The same can be said for writing a story. Basically it has all been done before. It doesn't, however, prevent many from writing great stories that touch and influence others.

Fair enough, I'm not saying that there isn't a ton of possible compositions - some might even eventually be called great.

But you're admitting that nothing truly novel is possible, which to (apparently only) me is a depressing state of affairs.

Where's robin when you need him? :P

You mention a few things very crudely, I think. Yes, it is true that tonality kind of started to lose value about 100 years ago, and that computer music started to emerge in the 50's, and that there were people in the second half of the 20th century who were interested in sounds rather than formalised "music", but all this means very little.

You mention the "end" of tonality as one factor of limiting music, while in fact you should be doing the opposite. Tonality is a set of abstract rules, vaguely related to natural phenomena, which persisted for about 300 years. And music didn't just exist those 300 years, it had existed for thousands of years before that, and in thousands of other countries and cultures other than the Western societies of those centuries. Since Tonality is a set of rules, as soon as it "ended" (assuming it ended at a particular time period, which didn't quite happen), there are less restrictions in composing, therefore more opportunities and more freedom.

With freedom comes more responsibility, though, and thus it's up to each composer now to show what they can do with that freedom. I think music today is not about what you have and what you use, but how you use it. A lot of things happened in the 20th century - in fact, a lot more than any other time in the past. The amount of literature on music, instrumentation, analysis, composition etc, the invention of instruments, the involvement of electronics and the development of technology and recording media has affected music tremendously, and furthermore the interaction between music and the other arts as well as cultures, societies and history is unique - the artistic world has never been richer and freer.

I don't believe people today care too much about things such as "tonality", "atonality", "new tonality" - as long as someone composes something that sounds good. There are a lot of composers, particularly British composers (as far as I know) who use a lot of tonal elements in their music, yet no one would call them "tonal" composers, nor does their music sound like anyone else's or like another period. It's not the fact that they use tonal elements in their music that will make them good or bad composers, but how they combine those elements with other elements to create a soundscape that will intrigue, interest and please other people (or just themselves).

To sum up, I'll just quote Wolfgang Rihm:

"there is nothing wrong with something establishing itself if it has the inherent strength to do so."

The Ensemble Sospeso - Wolfgang Rihm

You mention the "end" of tonality as one factor of limiting music, while in fact you should be doing the opposite.

Nah man, you're misunderstanding me. My point was that these things were massive revolutions that opened the doors to a new(ly rediscovered?) understanding of music.

But it's like the world: its almost all been discovered, especially with work in pre-Renaissance music.

I mentioned the end of the monopoly of tonality over the musical spectrum. By no means has tonality been buried, even during atonality's height - nor should it.

Well, you're obviously very biased, when you call the last 20 years of music "noise" :P

And I am not misunderstanding you - I think you should express yourself better. From what you wrote, I understand that you express a kind of "frustration" in terms of finding difficulty in composing something original, as if somehow all the things you mentioned "depleted" the musical realm and there aren't many original/new/good things to do anymore. If you meant something else, it would be good if you phrased it accordingly :P

Also, I think that you're misunderstanding me: I am not saying tonality is the way to go, nor do I say that it should continue to exist as it has. I just mentioned tonality as an example of a style of composition that has been used in a different way - just to show that you don't have to be Stockhausen in order to compose your own music, and that you don't have to re-invent music with every piece of yours :)

Last, but not least, it always depends on how you define music - as soon as you define music as "organised sound", even in the form of Cage's 4'33", then there is nothing else to be "discovered", or "invented" in terms of music, because it all boils down to how you organise sounds.

Do you think there are still novel concepts in music? That true innovation is possible? Please show examples if possible.

I find it very frustrating to compose sometimes because, 100 years after the end of tonality's monopoly, 50 years after the advent of computer music, 30 years after heavy experimentation with sound as opposed to music per se, and 20 years of pure noise, I end up feeling like music has so few places left to go...

Thoughts?

i have to admitt sometimes i wonder the same thing.

Well, you're obviously very biased, when you call the last 20 years of music "noise" :P

And I am not misunderstanding you - I think you should express yourself better. From what you wrote, I understand that you express a kind of "frustration" in terms of finding difficulty in composing something original, as if somehow all the things you mentioned "depleted" the musical realm and there aren't many original/new/good things to do anymore. If you meant something else, it would be good if you phrased it accordingly :P

Last, but not least, it always depends on how you define music - as soon as you define music as "organised sound", even in the form of Cage's 4'33", then there is nothing else to be "discovered", or "invented" in terms of music, because it all boils down to how you organise sounds.

True, there is a measure of begging the question, but I was legitimately curious what peoples thoughts were. But prior to 4'33", the concept of performer silence alone as music was unheard of, at least in practice. But now, one can sue for copyright over silence - which is my point. There is no barrier left for music, is there?

This topic pops up periodically, and here's my standard response (quoted from a previous thread):

"I think a lot can still be done when leaning towards improvisatory/creative music. Composers like Butch Morris, Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, William Parker et al use non-standard notation to extract the music from the performers. Pieces can often be interpreted in a myriad of ways, and that's where the originality comes in: finding new ways to shape/steer/control improvisation..."

The tools and concepts and materials are already laid out for us...how we choose to assemble and interpret them is where creativity and originality and innovation happen.

*waves at Jujimufu* ;)

In the baroque period, people thought everything that there was to be done in music had been done.

Then the classical period came around. They found new things to do in their music. After that, they thought everything had been done again.

Then, the Romantics came around and did their thing. THEY thought EVERYTHING that could be done in music was done now.

Then, the 20th century came around, and the same thing happened. Except that period of doubt is happening now this time.

This topic pops up periodically...

"I think a lot can still be done when leaning towards improvisatory/creative music. Composers like Butch Morris, Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, William Parker et al use non-standard notation to extract the music from the performers. Pieces can often be interpreted in a myriad of ways, and that's where the originality comes in: finding new ways to shape/steer/control improvisation..."

I wonder, though, that while the organization might change on the surface, whether deeper (internal?) organization, the reactions of the musicians, would be any different. Condanction, Conduction, and Game Pieces are all essentially the same thing - seeing x, which is arbitrarily decided on by somewhat of a third party, means doing y (Understandably simplified, maybe too much even... but i haven't looked terribly hard at the techniques.), and that's just the fundamentals of written music, just on the spot.

But the rise of wholly improvised musics is a relatively recent development, in the past 60 years or so.

The tools and concepts and materials are already laid out for us...how we choose to assemble and interpret them is where creativity and originality and innovation happen.

Right, Schoenberg was just looking at the notes of the western dodecaphonic system to develop his style, but I feel there's a huge jump in innovation from "well, increased chromaticism has limited the usefulness of explaining and writing in tonal keys; so screw it all, lets make non-tonal music" to "non-tonal music still needs a system... lets try this." Similarly all the way up, whatever divergences in music you deem sufficiently innovative. I'm still very fearful that there isn't going to be a next big innovation. Are we really to the point of simply refining what has been previously introduced?

I'm really not trying to be so pedantic and negative, but I don't see anyone really looking for future music, but its hard to fathom "something else." Hell, the best I can come up with is more mixing music with (pseudo?)science and really messing with psychoacoustics and inaudible sounds (like movies do already...). Or maybe a room that through directed speakers and noise canceling, provides a severely different listening experience depending on where you stand (which I can't imagine someone hasn't done already, and that's starting to get into *gasp* conceptual art instead of strictly a composition method).

Why be depressed? Have YOU written compositions which have fully exhausted the possibilties of 12-tone, serialism, minimalism, spectralism, computer and purely maths based music (eg early Xenakis)?

I doubt it very highly. Therefore, you have a long way to go before even being depressed over "innovating". Why not "innovate" what you write (via studying and writing) regardless of "where it fits"

I wonder, though, that while the organization might change on the surface, whether deeper (internal?) organization, the reactions of the musicians, would be any different. Condanction, Conduction, and Game Pieces are all essentially the same thing - seeing x, which is arbitrarily decided on by somewhat of a third party, means doing y (Understandably simplified, maybe too much even... but i haven't looked terribly hard at the techniques.), and that's just the fundamentals of written music, just on the spot.

Sortof... While the systems are based around semiotic gestures/symbols, their intent is not to simply replace notation, but to offer a means for the composer to control and manipulate the music, in real time. The composer as improvisor - also (especially in Zorn's gamepieces, i.e. Cobra) the rules govern the interactions, not necessarily the output...all of which is filtered through prompter...

BUT, I see your point.

I'm still very fearful that there isn't going to be a next big innovation. Are we really to the point of simply refining what has been previously introduced?...I don't see anyone really looking for future music, but its hard to fathom "something else."

I think you're just being a bit pessimistic...there's many new directions in music with microtonal concepts, interactive electronics.... You're hoping for a crystal ball to predict the next 'innovation'; innovations which will arrive in their due time.

I, for one, agree with Ferkungamabooboo.

I think many of the replies in this thread have incredibly missed his point. His point WASN'T that good music can't be written nowadays due to the fact that stylistically every thing's already been done - his point is that music just CAN'T be substantially revolutionized any further. And despite whatever odd tuning or scale you might want to come up with, the fact is that there is no major, structural, stylistically foundational route for music to be innovative.

As for Voce's naive post about how everyone in the past thought everything had been done, I ask you - where can we go after tonality AND atonality? WHere can we go after 4'33"? Where can we go after Hovhaness and subsequent fusion of non-Anglo traditional music and Western classical music? Where can we go after bird chirping and whale songs have already been used AS a vital part of music composition? Where can we go after both premeditation AND aleatoric composition? Where can we go after every genre has not only been exhausted in and of itself but has also been exhausted as a fusion of itself and other genres as well? You may be able to think of novel ideas such as lightbulb percussion as a conceptual metaphor or using idiophones to strike membranophones, or composing music aleatorically by assigning notes and rhythms to ballot responses and creating a musical synthesis of the upcoming U.S. presidential election, but no musically revolutionary and artistically-sustainable innovation is upon is, be it suddenly or gradually.

Your post may conceptually sound like it's wiser than a fortune cookie, but any degree of critical thinking here suggests otherwise.

...his point is that music just CAN'T be substantially revolutionized any further. And despite whatever odd tuning or scale you might want to come up with, the fact is that there is no major, structural, stylistically foundational route for music to be innovative.

And MY point is that we simply CAN'T know or foresee any major innovations, be they structural, sylistic, what-have-you...

... I ask you - where can we go after tonality AND atonality? WHere can we go after 4'33"? ... [blah blah blah] ... but no musically revolutionary and artistically-sustainable innovation is upon is, be it suddenly or gradually.

Yes...all the things you mentioned have been done. I can't tell you what hasn't been done...BECAUSE IT HASN'T HAPPENED. I expect there's a world of potential musical innovations waiting to be discovered. Like this:

Seriously...with all the technological advancement going on around us, WHY would anyone assume that music has exhausted all potential options? Why do you think music has stagnated? Is architecture done? Sculpture is finished? Have all the BOOKS been written? There's innovations waiting to happen that we can't imagine yet!! (one current trend is towards the joining of disciplines - live painting/music for example)

Your post may conceptually sound like it's wiser than a fortune cookie, but any degree of critical thinking here suggests otherwise.

Care to elaborate?

In every genre, there's something that hasn't been done because it doesn't "fit" the genre. Then, suddenly, someone comes along and "makes" it "fit." As has been stated, if we have the tools, why not use them in new and innovative ways. And even if there is nowhere new to go, I do believe the point was the OP's frustration when it comes to composing.

I say, if you're only trying to do something new, you're not looking in the right direction. All the time people praise new things solely for being new, regardless of the quality of work. If you have something you want to say musically, then say it. And as you're composing, just do what's right for the piece. That's where you'll find yourself doing things you didn't expect to be doing, because the piece is in control, not you trying to squeeze it into something it's not just to be "new."

I'm not saying that you would have such disregard for the quality of your piece, but nothing should be solely focused on doing something that's never been done before. Things that have been done before and are done repeatedly work. And there are ways to use things that work without just rehashing all the same old stuff.

In other words, don't try to shake things up, but do what you do, do it to the best of your ability, and see what you discover along the way. Some of the most innovative discoveries occur because of happy accidents.

Edit: after reading Robin's last post, I'm editing this to add on a little, because I whole-heartedly agree. We can't try to tell the future and we can't try to make the changes single-handed. Movements happen because styles shift, and they never just turn around. Especially these days, as we can't classify a "period" the way we can with hundred-year-old music. As music keeps splitting in so many different directions and styles evolve, how can we define what "the" next big movement will be? The fact that you can call something that happened in the 70s too old to be a recent change proves that. Things are actually moving faster than they ever have, and in more directions. If you're looking for the thing that's going to affect ALL of that... it won't happen.

As for Voce's naive post about how everyone in the past thought everything had been done, I ask you - where can we go after tonality AND atonality? WHere can we go after 4'33"? Where can we go after Hovhaness and subsequent fusion of non-Anglo traditional music and Western classical music? Where can we go after bird chirping and whale songs have already been used AS a vital part of music composition? Where can we go after both premeditation AND aleatoric composition? Where can we go after every genre has not only been exhausted in and of itself but has also been exhausted as a fusion of itself and other genres as well? You may be able to think of novel ideas such as lightbulb percussion as a conceptual metaphor or using idiophones to strike membranophones, or composing music aleatorically by assigning notes and rhythms to ballot responses and creating a musical synthesis of the upcoming U.S. presidential election, but no musically revolutionary and artistically-sustainable innovation is upon is, be it suddenly or gradually.

Your post may conceptually sound like it's wiser than a fortune cookie, but any degree of critical thinking here suggests otherwise.

You seem think music is a dead language, and I'm naive.

Huh.

I think Robin puts it best when he says we can't tell you what's the next big innovation, "because it hasn't happened yet."

I think one thing that people seem to forget about is sometimes not so much the style of music in which you write a piece, but the statement being made by a piece. I think a piece can have an interesting back story and an interesting message to send out, and that is what can make something unique and innovative. Write a work that is a social commentary, demonstrating your view of society or that is your musical interpretation of an current situation in the world. In my opinion if its not necessarily innovative, a piece that is inspired by something that the composer is passionate about and feels very strongly about, will always be fresh and new because everyone has something worth saying and they just need to find what that something is.

Thing is this:

Why do you need inovation? I'm in favour of contemporary music and blah blah, but I can't see a reason, OUTSIDE ACADEMIA, where inovation is needed, apart from the composer having fun! I mean, in the end, if C maj suites you, then go ahead no problem. Has it been done before? Maybe, but not by YOU, which is the main issue!

What seems to be forgotten in every thread like this is that composition is not about form and technique, and inovation only! It's about the filters that go through!

I say give two different composers the same melodic material, the same harmonic ideas, the same form and see how different they will grow (in fact this is a nice idea for an excersize!) See how given the same... 12-tone rows for example, and strict instructions on how 12-tone or serialist you can be, you will get hugely different results!

No matter the tunning, no matter computers, no matter anything, if the composers has something in mind it should come out! And what is in our mind should be unique! Other wise we are people, not persons!

And, yes, where is Robin? EDIT: Didn't read page 2. Missed it! Whoops! There is Robin! Bud I will call you at some point, just wish I knew when... Sorry about that! :)

Lemme clarify my intent, firstly. It isn't that I think what I write isn't good because it's not innovative, or whatever. Its frustrating, though, when you're writing, that there are deep limitations on what is possible. Not frustrating in a way so as to not be able to complete a piece, to not want to delve deeper into styles that appeal to me, but on a philosophical level.

But I'm not saying that there ISN'T a next step. I think there has to be, or music will become even less important than it is now. It will be a purely knowledge-based art, somewhat like film scoring - this style produces this emotion, which complements what is going on. I'm just curious to see what people are working on to facilitate that.

For the reactable - I think its a cute, even very interesting, toy. I don't see any practical way to make it as effective an instrument as even a decent Dj setup. I watched a clip of Bjork using it at Coachella. It was interesting, but what he was doing was nothing I hadn't heard on recordings of Gordon Mumma. Granted, it was realtime, in higher quality, and a lot of other things, but it doesn't seem revolutionary to the concept of live electronic composition. It looks damn cool though, and its a neat addition to a live performer's collection. I want one :)

As to what hasn't been done yet, I think looking backwards is a bit of a red herring. While it wasn't musically acceptable to write atonally in Bach's time, a corollary can be drawn to Lennie Tristano's Descent into the Maelstrom record. While it was by no means acceptable to break the jazz tonality in 1953, he thought of it and did it. I feel that there may have been people writing atonally in Bach's time, just they didn't survive the test of time and instead of 50 years, it's been centuries. However, it shows that over time, the opinion of "What is Music?" has changed significantly, and shows promise that something else will happen.

Maybe a better, but still insufficient, way to have worded this would be "Where is music going next?" I think Robin hit it on the head - control of improvisation. But that's a(n instant) composition technique, not a change in the scope of music as a whole. The instant compositions will still be well rooted in something from the past, since musicians' educations are so. I feel that it is a refinement of previous forms as well, not a shift.

As to statements in music, I feel that the only meaningful statements about socioeconomics or politics or society that music can reflect is on the macro scale. The rise of atonality coincides with the aftermath of the Great War, or at least the rise in tension leading to WWI (depending on at what point you want to put the nail in the coffin). Minimalism coincides with a time of excess, a time where enjoyability was top dog. (forgive my weak history, but I feel the point remains.) Surely the Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima has a point to the piece, I just feel analyzing individual pieces is an exercise in trees and forests.

The joining of arts is an interesting point. I feel that that refers more to performance, however, despite the instantaneous composition. I fear that it might be mostly packaging, but that's just been my limited experience.

A quick wiki of Spectral music (which I hadn't head the term of, but the description matched not only some of the concepts I've worked with, but heard) provides as early as 1907 for microtonal music, and temperament changes have occurred multiple times in history, creating microtonal shifts in perception of music.

I just think that this is a key concept for a composer of any time period, to see what comes next, what is the cutting edge, even if those cutting edge styles are neither what the composer prefers to write, listen to, nor support.

Music will never lose its ability to reflect (and shape?) society. Music's sole purpose, of course, is not innovation. However, you can't deny that any art form needs to grow and mutate constantly, lest it become pass

So there seem to be three strands of thought here:

1. You can't know or foresee the innovations simply because they haven't happened yet.

2. Greater technology will allow for innovation in music.

3. Good music doesn't require innovation or doing something foundationally new.

Point "3." is irrelevant to this thread. Moving on:

1. Well of course we can't foresee the possible innovations - but that doesn't support your point any more than it does mine. I realize (and I hope you do too) that there is no way for either argument to "win" this debate, given the inherently unknowable nature of the future. But if technology is the bridge...

2. Technology can make new ways of playing music. It can make new ways of composing music. But music consists of the basic elements of pitch, rhythm, dynamics, and texture. Technology can NOT make new "music". There may be new ways to play or write music, but listening to it through speakers, it won't be anything that can't already be done with a computer program and patches.

Of course, like I said, there's no way to validate a forecast in advance, so you're free to bring in new points if you've got them, but otherwise this is just a dead-end discussion.

Ferkungamabooboo,

Do you really value originality above beauty? It sounds to me like you're terrified of being forgotten. If you're interested in moving forwards, look back first. The way I perceive things, musical development tends to move in waves of development followed by synthesis. That is to say that a series of generations make lots of breakthroughs which are then consolidated by the final (usually most well-known) set of composers.

Bach created no new real forms, but was a brilliant synthesist (I suppose he was something of a 'fusion' artist by modern standards). He combined tight contrapuntal styles with those he had heard from across Europe, and the result was something almost wholly original. I feel we're in for a spell of consolidation now. Music from Mahler to serialism needs reconciling!

2. Technology can make new ways of playing music. It can make new ways of composing music. But music consists of the basic elements of pitch, rhythm, dynamics, and texture. Technology can NOT make new "music".

By this logic, nothing anyone's ever done has made new music. Since notes were already being written and played by the 6th century BC, even when people found new ways of composing, playing, and generally just making sounds that were perceived as music, nothing was "new" since it already had pitch, rhythm, dynamics and texture.

That's absurd.

EVERYBODY QUIT, NOTHING YOU CAN DO IS ORIGINAL ANYMORE, GO HOME.

it will be decided only and only if we will ever know what is human mind and the universe.

if it is a closed system, there will inevitably come time, when there will be nothing new under the sun.

if it is open, then there will always be new things and possibility for novelty.

simple as that.

if we will not know (closed or open) it will always be undecided.

by the way, voce, i love your sig. now i think i have a companion among great composers :) starWHISKEY. seemslike the man knew :)