What would music historians call this era?

So I just recently attended the National Association of Composers U.S.A Texas Chapter Conference in late February this year, and, along with finally having one of my pieces premiered on the conference, I went to four concerts, attended a NACUSA membership meeting, a composer symposium, and listened to guest key note speaker and composer Cindy McTee. A general theme I had taken away from the conference was the future of composing, which promoted my own question that I want to ask my fellow composers here;

What do you think musicologists and/or music historians in the future will call this era of music as a whole? What are the characteristics of this era and what are the cultural, political, and environmental influences that have effected how music is composed in this era?

I think that we've come to a point where things stop being linear. After Cage's 4'33", I think music went to the next level (level 52?).

Western music (because I assume that's what you're talking about - trying to categorise all ethnological musics under a single "era" would seem weird, meaningless, silly and impossible, I think) seems to have had an almost continuous line of progress from as far as we know it to the early 20th century - from Ancient Greeks to Byzantine Chants to Gregorian Chants to Renaissance music to Baroque music to Classical music to Romantic music to "Expressionistic"/very chromatic (not to say they are the same) music.

And then suddenly you get an explosion. An explosion of diversity - and whereas before everyone had a common thread to follow, now many many threads start spreading around, almost a single thread for each composer and music can be less and less categorised and more and more diverse, even within a single composer's lifetime. I think with Cage's 4'33" music exploded. Not to say that music ceased to be part of this linear continuity the moment Cage wrote his piece - but rather, if we assume that the history of music is like a massive house where it took people many years to go from one room to the other, and there were a few doors in the beginning, and as you get closer to the 20th century there are a few more doors, and suddenly with Cage all doors opened. Doors from behind (which were left open anyway) and doors from ahead, and doors from even further ahead, all doors, they slam-opened revealing what's in each room - the whole thing now is one big massive area/space, in which all is music. Not to say that we've completely exploited every single combination of what we could invent in a piece (maybe further technologies will allow us to create different sounds or whatever), but it's not going to be a "new music" - it's just going to be.. music.

I don't think our "era" will be named, mainly because I don't think our "era" will ever finish for another era to start. All doors are unlocked and open, and there's not going to be a moment when people will say "that room between these doors, we should name it X", because there are no doors, it's all open!

Come in and have a drink in our massive, amazing, door-less house!

Pluralism (just a thought).

Pluralism (just a thought).

I like that

Nintendo.

I like Cindy McTee. Her music is very...unusual.

I tried writing this as fast I as could so there might be gramatical errors though out my responce...

I personally would think this era would be called the era of Deliberate Extremes and the Multi-style adaptive era. I have see in recent years, especially with younger composers, the deliberate attempt at writing music that is either incredible avant-garde or extremely harmonically functional. Now keep in mind that I am only generalizing based on what I have witnessed, but I feel that this sums up this era effectively. I feel that this is caused by several different factors; early but misconstrued or misinterpreted exposure to different styles of music, divisive attitudes towards different styles of music, a re-found desire to please an audience and a dramatic change in availability of resources such as capable musicians, concert space, and time.

I will touch on the first two points I made early and that is the early exposure to varying styles of music. But unfortunately a lot of new would be composers are not being exposed to this music objectively. Now we have young composers coming in believing that one style is superior to another. No longer is there opinions on styles, but a belief that it is a fact that one style trumps another. We now see composers graduating from college that there is one good style. You also see composers trying to mimic the styles of other composers without fully understanding the why and the how those composer wrote their music. We see composers write in a way that is very deliberate in a much different way then ever before. What I mean by that is that composers (and again I am just generalizing here by what I have seen) are writing (and here I am talking mainly about those composers who consider themselves avant-garde) for the purpose of gaining a particular reaction from their audience. This is not to say that this didn’t happen during the 60s and 70s but I do feel that this is happening in greater numbers. This all results in what I call either deliberate extremism ( composing in a style that is deliberate avant-garde style) or deliberate traditionism (composing in a style that is very deliberate neo-classical or neo-romantic style). This is something that I see on this site quite frequently.

Other contributing factors is the re-found desire to make music for the masses. This comes out of the growing trend I see of composers trying harder to make their main form of income through composing. This is not a new concept, however the audience that will be listening to this new music has changed. Those who do want to listen to new contemporary music has diminished in numbers so composers now have to find a new audience. Composers now turn to mainstream media such as movies, T.V., videogames, and other mainstream commercial mediums. This practice of writing music of commercial use, though once thought as a bad thing among the classical community, is now not just the norm but a goal most composers set out to achieve. I do believe this will have an effect on how musicologist will view this era of music in contrast to music of the 20th century.

Another factor, and what I believe is the most influential factor, is our diminishing medium in which our music can be performed. Finding performers is becoming more and more difficult to find due to adverse attitudes towards new contemporary music. For every one performer who will actively want and desire new music there are at least 10 performers who have no interest in performing any music writing with in the last 80 years. I believe this attitude comes from the stigma of new music that has loomed over the contemporary music of it being weird and unpleasant that comes from the music of the 20th century. It has become much more difficult to convince a performer to take the time out of there week to dedicate themselves to practicing new music. This is changing how composers write music now and that was evident at the NACUSA conference in what music was submitted to be performed. We are also starting to see the professional orchestras, bands, and choirs go out of business all over the world as well as some major publishers. Professional orchestras and publishers are finding it a lot more profitable to play and publish music of older eras. And with today’s economic situation who knows what major publisher or orchestra will be left in a few years and without a doubt this will effect how composers write music in the professional world.

This is just a few things that I believe that musicologist will do when considering how to catalog this era. And if I was a musicologist of the future I would defiantly call this era the Deliberate Extremes and/or the Multi-style adaptive era.

I second what Juji said, really.

Post-postmodernism!

The divide between neo-fundamentalism (neo-romantics) and neo-liberalism (neo-modernism).

But the line of history Juji draws completely ignores cross-cultural effects during those times... I don't think they'll call it anything positive -- if sources are to be believed, terms like Baroque and Rococo are originally negative terms. Maybe one of the cutesy FoxNews names for this time?

It'll probably have something to do with the internet.

I did not ignore cross-cultural effects - cross-cultural interaction has almost always been a factor, from Byzantine music to Traditional spanish music, to Haydn (he used a lot of folk tunes in his music), to Bartok to Birtwistle (who draws inspiration from ancient greece and medieval music) to Tavener to whatever.

What I said is that I cannot dare to group all the musics in the whole world under one label, because that would be wrong. Classical Indian music did not undergo a "Baroque", or a "Romantic" era, and Japanese music certainly didn't have a Renaissance. And cross-cultural elements are all over the place, Japanese music was influenced by Chinese, Chinese music has interacted with Indian music, Indian music has interacted with Arabic/Persian music, Arabic music influenced Spanish music, Hungarian music influenced Romanian music (or the other way), Ancient Greek music was influenced by Arabic music, but it also influenced Byzantine music and the list goes on and on and on (I am not an expert so what I mentioned above might contain inaccuracies, but you get the idea). Where do you draw the line between one culture and the other?

Which is why I think labeling in general is a bit silly. Trying to put things in little boxes and label them is something very Western that has a lot to do with the fascination of the West by rationalisation and the need for imperialism.

I did not ignore cross-cultural effects - cross-cultural interaction has almost always been a factor, from Byzantine music to Traditional spanish music, to Haydn (he used a lot of folk tunes in his music), to Bartok to Birtwistle (who draws inspiration from ancient greece and medieval music) to Tavener to whatever.

What I said is that I cannot dare to group all the musics in the whole world under one label, because that would be wrong. Classical Indian music did not undergo a "Baroque", or a "Romantic" era, and Japanese music certainly didn't have a Renaissance. And cross-cultural elements are all over the place, Japanese music was influenced by Chinese, Chinese music has interacted with Indian music, Indian music has interacted with Arabic/Persian music, Arabic music influenced Spanish music, Hungarian music influenced Romanian music (or the other way), Ancient Greek music was influenced by Arabic music, but it also influenced Byzantine music and the list goes on and on and on (I am not an expert so what I mentioned above might contain inaccuracies, but you get the idea). Where do you draw the line between one culture and the other?

Which is why I think labeling in general is a bit silly. Trying to put things in little boxes and label them is something very Western that has a lot to do with the fascination of the West by rationalisation and the need for imperialism.

Though lableing sounds silly now but it is an inevitability within western culture. And besides we dont lable all the music of the world because every culture has its own musical history that is following its own path. Yeah they influenced each other but that doesnt make them the same thing.

When historians 100 years from now look back at this era they wont just call it "that nameless era", they will most likely give it an unbrella term and then futher categorize all the variouse movements that have sprinked themselves along our historical line. This is not a bad thing, it is just a tool differentiate between variouse styles and time periods in order to better understand the people of that time and what they did when juxtaposed to people of other eras. Yes it is not as easy as to say tell the diffrents between the baroque and romantic eras due to the fact there is not common practices in our era but instead we are in an era of multiple styles, but there are enough composers out there that many are writing in the same style that is drastically diffrent from another.

The only way I could see this era ending (and thus needing classification) is some sort of massive social upheaval and a re-definition of Western culture. Since music is (to grossly generalize) a product of culture, and since Western culture is nearly all-encompassing, it makes sense that modern Western music covers a wide spectrum of musics past and present from many geographic regions and traditions. If some sort of genocidal bigot took power of the US and started a massive purge, only to be followed by multiple generations of coups and upheavals, then yes, I could see musical culture changing radically enough that the previous era would warrant naming.

The other tricky part of classifying 20th century music is the indeterminancy of length of any particular period. For example, the Baroque era ended with JS Bach, and even after Mendelssohn discovered Bach's music and started putting together new performances of forgotten Baroque music, the Baroque era was still over. Now, however, (as Juji said), there are not only composers writing in every conceivable style of the past, but there are many composers that mix eras and cultural traditions that have no logical link. If eras were greatly telescoped, it MAY be possible to divide the century up into 4-5 eras, BUT, none of the areas ever really ended, as composers never stopped writing in the styles representative by those eras.

If there was a massive change, we may be referred to as the "experimental" era, or the "progressive-regressive" era, or even the "technological" era. I really can't see an end to experimenting, to forward progression, or technology anytime soon, though.

Our era? Probably "The Dark Ages" [of music]

*puts up flame shield, dons helmet, entrenches self in foxhole*

Our era? Probably "The Dark Ages" [of music]

Ah you mean the enlightenment [of music]?

Yeah, totally.

The only way I could see this era ending (and thus needing classification) is some sort of massive social upheaval and a re-definition of Western culture. Since music is (to grossly generalize) a product of culture, and since Western culture is nearly all-encompassing, it makes sense that modern Western music covers a wide spectrum of musics past and present from many geographic regions and traditions. If some sort of genocidal bigot took power of the US and started a massive purge, only to be followed by multiple generations of coups and upheavals, then yes, I could see musical culture changing radically enough that the previous era would warrant naming.

The other tricky part of classifying 20th century music is the indeterminancy of length of any particular period. For example, the Baroque era ended with JS Bach, and even after Mendelssohn discovered Bach's music and started putting together new performances of forgotten Baroque music, the Baroque era was still over. Now, however, (as Juji said), there are not only composers writing in every conceivable style of the past, but there are many composers that mix eras and cultural traditions that have no logical link. If eras were greatly telescoped, it MAY be possible to divide the century up into 4-5 eras, BUT, none of the areas ever really ended, as composers never stopped writing in the styles representative by those eras.

If there was a massive change, we may be referred to as the "experimental" era, or the "progressive-regressive" era, or even the "technological" era. I really can't see an end to experimenting, to forward progression, or technology anytime soon, though.

Well with that mind set musicologist might just have to re-define how they categorize eras. Instead of waiting for a major change they might just have to wait for a sight change in styles and instead of set styles they might have to categorize things on a spectrum. They might have to through out the idea of time periods and settle on genras.

And who is to say that a major change is not some where in the horizon? We are currently seeing more and more professinal orchestras and choirs going out of business all over the world. And more and more schools are cutting out fine arts and music from their curriculum (and not just public schools). As well as their is a declining intrest into music all across the board. If this trend was to continue I do see a drastic change in our culture and in how and why music is composed.

but this is all just a thought

Well with that mind set musicologist might just have to re-define how they categorize eras. Instead of waiting for a major change they might just have to wait for a sight change in styles and instead of set styles they might have to categorize things on a spectrum. They might have to through out the idea of time periods and settle on genras.

And who is to say that a major change is not some where in the horizon? We are currently seeing more and more professinal orchestras and choirs going out of business all over the world. And more and more schools are cutting out fine arts and music from their curriculum (and not just public schools). As well as their is a declining intrest into music all across the board. If this trend was to continue I do see a drastic change in our culture and in how and why music is composed.

but this is all just a thought

yeah, i think, due to economical pressure music may become less experimental/less free and more consumer concerned, this would limit it to some rather simple things in music and so, in light of which, our era could be called somewhat from pluralism (as suggested) to multiplism, plethorism.

Maybe they could name our era "spot". or "rex". that's a cool name.

Maybe they could name our era "spot". or "rex". that's a cool name.

I prefer names like 'Jimmy' or 'Susan' or we dodge problems with sexism and call it 'Pat' or "Jo'

Nintendo.

I dunno man. I played the Wii. Meh.

Why not the Mongooses? That's a cool team name. The Fighting mongooses!

I personally would think this era would be called the era of Deliberate Extremes and the Multi-style adaptive era. I have see in recent years, especially with younger composers, the deliberate attempt at writing music that is either incredible avant-garde or extremely harmonically functional.

Well, the best characterization of this era is "anything goes" – as Paul Feyerabend termed the state of philosophy of science in the 70s of the 20th century. It applies well to the history of musc since, say, 1909, if you take his assertion

Considering that contemporary 'art' music is a niche market to begin with, it seems fatuous to even make an attempt at christening a new era. I don't have actual statistics (anyone?), but if the audience size of all music today can be gauged from record sales, then popular music would chart in tens of millions, while classical music as a whole would be tens of thousands, and contemporary (art) music would be a mere fraction of that. Sure you can come up with descriptive name, but the sphere of influence would be very limited, considering the grand scheme of things.

Given that, if it were me I would name this era, the 'film music' era. Why? Because nowadays it's film composers who have the largest audience and hence the largest sphere of influence. If you score a blockbuster movie, the size of your audience is easily in the millions already, not to mention the prestige associated with the movie's success. I believe John Williams, James Horner and colleagues will be key figures cited in tomorrow's music history books.

The 'Limited Limitless Era'; or 'Unlimited Limit Era'.

Oh wait! How about 'Infinite Undiscovery Era'!

Or even better: The 'Musically Exhausted, But Not Really Musically Exhausted Era'!!!...(!11!!)

Given that, if it were me I would name this era, the 'film music' era. Why? Because nowadays it's film composers who have the largest audience and hence the largest sphere of influence. If you score a blockbuster movie, the size of your audience is easily in the millions already, not to mention the prestige associated with the movie's success. I believe John Williams, James Horner and colleagues will be key figures cited in tomorrow's music history books.

Usually an era is defined by a group of similar composers who write roughly in a similar style or at least have some popular/well-known works within a particular framework.

For example If I were to categorise the music of 1910-1940ish in England I would have to call it late romantic or neo-romantic due to the success and prominence of Elgar, Holst etc. Despite the fact that there were other composers writing completely different music, the era would be defined by just a small fraction of composers.

So yes I agree with you in some ways, but I'm not sure if this era will be named 'film music'.