Chapter 28 The Era An Introduction Illustration 1: "Autumn Gold", Hans Hoffman, 1957 "They... think it within their power to corrupt, spoil and ruin the good old rules handed down.. by... the very men from whom these moderns have learned to string together a few notes with little grace. For them it is enough to create a tumult of sounds, a confusion of absurdities, an assemblage of imperfections." "Music was chaste and modest so long as it was played on simpler instruments, but since it has come to be played in a variety of manners and confusedly, it has lost the mode of gravity and virtue and fallen almost to baseness." " " by " " was performed recently, and all impartial musicians and music lovers were in complete agreement that never was anything written in music so incoherent, shrill, muddled, and utterly shocking to the ear." Perhaps one of the most profoundly foolish things an historian can do is try to make definitive statements about the era in which he is living. If the reader has not asked himself the following question, he most likely will at some point in his life, when he feels he has seen it all What else is there that can possibly come along?
Indeed, in recent decades we have undergone musical revolutions beyond the anyone's wildest imagination. What is left to do when all of the rules were already thrown out the window two revolutions ago? For most of history, a Venn diagram of what was defined as art would not have encompassed 4 33 by John Cage, Free Jazz by Ornette Coleman, or a painting by Jackson Pollack. In the 21st century, those are yesterday s news. Illustration 2: "Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist)", Jackson Pollack Once again, there is an immense amount of wisdom in the saying by James Burke: We see what our knowledge tells us we are seeing. When that knowledge changes, we see something differently. If it's any comfort, a dynamic and growing human culture will always discover something that causes it to rethink reality and its music and art will tell the tales of its newly formed window on the universe. In the first episode of his PBS series The Day the Universe Changed, Burke tells a story of someone remarking to the philosopher Wittgenstein about how the ancients were so ignorant because they believed the sun went around the earth. Intelligent moderns know, of course, that the earth goes around the sun. Wittgenstein's reply was to ask what it would look like if the sun DID go around the earth?
The answer is that it would have looked exactly the same. Prior to that knowledge, the Earth was the center of the universe. It was the pinnacle of creation. Everything else was inferior. However, there is a whole set of baggage that comes with the understanding that we are a tiny insignificant planet circling a tiny insignificant star in a tiny insignificant galaxy in a tiny insignificant cluster of galaxies in a universe larger than a human's imagination is capable of dealing with. Discoveries lead to other discoveries, directly and indirectly. New mathematical equations and formulas have to be created to deal with models too complex for the human imaginationi. New branches of science, new terminology follow quickly. As its knowledge changes, each era redefines its own reality; in the same way, it redefines its own theology. And, of course the focus of this document it redefines its own music and art that resonates with what it knows and understands. Illustration 3: "Pierrot", William Baziots, 1947 For much of Western History, Aristotle's description of the universe was the accepted paradigm. He believed that the heavens were a series of crystal spheres. Objects moving in space moved in perfect (with the emphasis on perfect) circles, while objects moving on the imperfect Earth moved exactly in straight lines. A cannonball fired at a 45 degree angle went in a straight line until it ran out of energy and then fell straight down in a straight line.
It wasn't until the Renaissance when it was realized that projectiles move in a parabolic arc. Huh? Let's get this straight two children throwing a ball back and forth could easily see it wasn't going in perfectly straight lines! How could it possibly be that grown men couldn't understand this until the 1500s? Well... if one is going to examine all of the possibilities no matter how bizarre one has to consider that possibly the physical laws of the universe abruptly changed and things suddenly started traveling through the air in curves instead of straight lines. Illustration 4: "Cosmology", Roy Lichtenstein 1947 That's possible. And there is a piece of wisdom known as Occam's Razor which states that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. The physical laws of the universe probably didn't mutate. The best explanation that this writer can think of remains Burke's assertion: their knowledge told them Aristotle was correct. That's that, the final word has been spoken, end of the discussion, and you don't dare question it. Someone didn't until their knowledge caused them to open their eyes and their minds a little farther and see that something else was happening. And of course, we in the 21st century see things clearly. We understand everything there is to understand, we know all of the physical principles, so nothing new will ever be discoveredii.
This is a statement made countless times in history and proven laughable each time. Maybe we shouldn't be too hasty to compliment ourselves, because our knowledge is a constantly changing kaleidoscope. Quantum mechanics threatens to upset the apple cart in a way like few movements ever seen in Western history. And, if superstring theory, and the concept of an infinite number of parallel universes where there are an infinite number of versions of each of us, each on slightly different paths can ever be proven... plan on throwing out everything we have ever been taught about the nature of reality. The logical conclusion is that it would be perfectly reasonable to expect that in 500 years, we will look as primitive and befuddled about reality as we view someone living in the Middle Ages. We should understand that change is a constant in Western society and that it's a normal reaction to new trends to usually find them difficult to understand at first. For evidence of the above paragraph, please re-read the three quotes at the beginning of this section. The first quotation was written by the music theorist Boethius who died in 524 CE. The second was written in the 1600s. Fill in the blanks in the third quotation with The Overture to the Opera Fidelo and Ludwig van Beethoven. Illustration 5: "Tiger", Ellsworth Kelly, 1953
What might the name of our era be? Currently we are the modern era. The problem is that since historians have been keeping track, that s what every era has called itself. As we've seen, the names historians give to eras are often based on how later peoples saw them in their own perspective and not always in a complementary light. The people from from 1600 to 1750 found their music exciting, complex, emotionally expressive. It was representative of the grandness of the human institutions and the human condition and their clear and accurate way of seeing the world (unlike the previous era). Later eras thought it odd and gave it the insulting name Baroque. The era the followed it found its own music dynamic, exciting, expressive. It was representative of the grandness of the human institutions and the human condition and their clear and accurate way of seeing the world (unlike the previous era). Later eras found it somewhat formulaic and derivative of the style of an ancient civilization and called it Classical (or as in the case of the visual arts, Neo-classical). So what will historians think about our era? It's a tough call and almost foolish to speculate, but if the last fifty years have been any indication of the upheaval created by electronic media; if the last twenty years are any indication of how music along with the lives of musicians, people in the music industry, distributors of recorded material, economies, laws, people who make the laws, and the consumer has been profoundly transformed by the Internet like no other time in history, we will probably have some reference to media in the name. This is an era where musicians have become incredibly wealthy, influential (even to the point of occasionally having status equal to world leaders), and uncensored social critics. When the calendar turned over from 1999 to 2000, many historians took the time to evaluate the inventions of the millennium. In the top ten of most of them (and for many THE top item) was Gutenberg s moveable type. The ripple effect on communication, literacy, culture, politics was unprecedented. Historians looking back at our era may conclude that the Internet will have as much, if not more, impact on the human race. As we've seen through history, change happens and extreme change is not a bad thing. It is a product of a healthy, growing, dynamic culture and a result of a thriving economy and a fertile scientific community not afraid to rock the boat. When the dust has had a chance to settle in a hundred years or so, it will be fascinating to see what historians think about this last century or so.
Illustration 6: "Nude Woman", Pablo Picasso, 1910
i Probably worth noting that our mathematicians have felt it necessary to invent a number called a googolplex, a number larger than the estimated number of sub-atomic particles in the entire known universe. ii In 1843, a patent office commissioner stated we were trending to a point where everything that was going to be invented would be invented. Material copyright 2016 by Gary Daum, all rights reserved. All photos and illustrations by Gary Daum unless otherwise noted. Unlimited use granted to current members of the Georgetown Prep community.