Contemporary or just Temporary?

LinearLineman

This is not a rant. Everything is finer than frogs' hair. I just started thinking about the great "jazz" @Daveypoo posted on some thread or other and the VanZandt interview. Probably 90% of the music the ordinary listener would really love he/she will never hear. It's all out there, but there is just too much great stuff to sift through! And not enough time in our busy lives (except for folks like me who spend too much from an ever dwindling time account to think about the useless and moot.). Still, is there something different in the 21st? I mean, even Jacob Collier is riffing on music written two hundred years ago. Unfortunately, Jacob Collier is temporary, but "Fur Elise" will live on as long as there are car horns and ringtones to play it.

conTEMPORARY music seems to have a shelf life. Will it be great a hundred years from now? Yes. Will many care? Probably...no. So what is the difference between Mozart, Bach et. al. and the Beatles, Lady Gaga, and Elton John (Elvis excepted)?

Of course I am talking about Western civilization, but even the Chinese and Japanese elite have attached themselves to the three Bs and M. Who is your Chinese fav who doesn't play classical? Who is your Chinese opera heart throb?

In ye olden days it was either folk music, church music, or, if you had a few bucks, court music. There was only one channel of everything.... the famous "Now" (which is the most temporary thing we got). You were in a cathedral, around the bonfire, or kissing some Lord's ass. A little later you might hear Liszt in a salon while Chopin was coughing up blood on the commode. Yet that primitive tech, with no recording other than writing it down with a quill or that breakthrough technology, the nib,has lasted, relatively, a long time and will continue to indefinitely, cause.... Cause Why?

McD

The really good music (as determined by musicians) will continue to be played. Scott Joplin, Stephen Foster, Leadbelly, Tibetan Throat Singing and Zappa shall not perish anytime soon, I think. Aliens will totally get MIDI files and probably go deep into EDM when the discover one of our devices near the Obelisk they send down first. Then they will come seeking more sonic instructions and die when they decipher Beethoven in a state of ecstatic bliss. Like a fatal orgasm. This might make the basis for a cool musical. "2101: A Musical Space Odyessy"

[Deleted User]

It might be that two/three hundred years ago art had reached its peak and started to decline.

LinearLineman

@McD ... I disagree. You figure out about what.😝😈😇

LinearLineman

@[Deleted User], but so much great music has been created since, like... (you fill in the blanks).

[Deleted User]

@LinearLineman said:
@[Deleted User], but so much great music has been created since, like... (you fill in the blanks).

Its true but like you said, how much music will be remembered in the future? Saying that us dudes who like to create music don't have to worry. Just create in the now 🌈

McD

@LinearLineman said:
@McD ... I disagree. You figure out about what.😝😈😇

There are videos on YouTube proving that aliens have orgasms. So, disagree all you want. It's true.

McD

@[Deleted User] said:
Its true but like you said, how much music will be remembered in the future?

In the future music tracks will only last 2-3 seconds. Whole concept pieces will last about 60 seconds.
Sitting through something like "Sgt Peppers" will require sedation. Then the aliens will arrive and bliss out on what we consider to be quality like Mahler's 5th. I picked Mahler because the @Linearlineman think he's an Austro-Bohemian which totally misses the point. He was an excellent dancer.

horsetrainer

I'll speculate that useful technology tends to remain in use, passed down to subsequent generations, simply because it remains useful.

Music is a form of technology with multiple purposes. Musical notation is a technology for recording music using written symbology. Music itself is built upon mathematical principles, and the instruments that create music are mechanical inventions.

Music is entertainment, has cultural significance, can be used to communicate messages, and reinforce systems of belief.

Music is a useful technology.

People who lived in earlier time periods used music as one of their primary forms of entertainment, and it also served a function for facilitating social cohesiveness in group gatherings.

Music was valued, and being taught to play an instrument was something of an important responsibility.

Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach.... Created music that was easily recognizable, and technologically sophisticated. The existence of musical notation assured that their music would be reprinted, and used by others learning to play instruments.

A music teaching methodology was developed that centered on using the music of classic composers as a part of a standardized curriculum.

People who learned to play music by a standardized curriculum, tended to become music teachers who taught students in the same way they learned.

All of these are examples of useful technologies (including important musical masterpieces) that became foundational technological elements which together with tools, math, horticulture, science, law, religion, and every other thing people discovered, built, and though of, all became essential to human survival, and remain in existence because they continue to be useful.

I think the music that will survive into the future, will be the music that most eloquently expresses the capacity of musicians (people) to use music to express ideas into musical forms in ways that become timeless, similar to the way mathematical equations can express the laws of nature in timeless ways.

Pi will always be a truthful expression about something of the nature of the world, and so are musical masterpieces.

McD

Maybe Protemporary?