***5/9: This post has been updated based on the comments discussion.***
This is a reply to Zach's post on Radiohead earlier today. But since I wanted to include a picture, I had to put it into a new post! For context, read the previous discussion.
Zach, your comment that music is cyclical, and never "totally new" is well taken. I agree that that is a better description of what happens. I was trying to think of a metaphor that describes some of the nuance of multiple stages a musical style goes through over time, which I think looks roughly like the following:
1) gestation,
2) development,
3) extreme development
4) disintegration and upheaval
5) return to gestation/reinvention
The first thing that came to mind was the earth's water cycle, which wikipedia.org describes as "continuous movement of water on, above, and below the surface of the Earth" ("Water Cycle"). I think the five stages are comparable (where water = musical aesthetic trends):
1) storage of water in the earth (gestation)
2) evaporation of water into the sky (i.e. development of the basic matter "up" to new heights)
3) condensation (this is the extreme development of a tradition where complexity increases)
4) precipitation (this is the disintegration and upheaval of a style's given aesthetic traits), which, like raindrops, return to the first stage of "matter for future development")
5) return of water to storage (aesthetic traits, like raindrops, return to the first stage, to be used as future gestation matter, these same molecules to be inevitably reformed in new and interesting structures.)
Forgive the rough-and-ready nature of the comparison—this idea is only a half-hour old. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts/criticisms of the metaphor.
2 comments:
Interesting analogy! This schema makes a lot of sense, and I think you may be on to something here.
The stage of the musical ecosystem I have the most questions about is the "explosion and upheaval" stage. There are a couple ways to interpret this: in one scenario, all the development of a new technique/advance is done behind closed doors and the "explosion" represents the first formal exhibition of an innovative idea and the cultural upheaval that occurs (say, like the debut performance of "Le Sacre du Printemps"). In the other way of looking at it, all the development goes on in the public eye, and the explosion represents the tipping point when a new technique ceases to be revolutionary and falls back to earth.
It is clear that certain styles/aesthetics have had their time in the sun and now comprise the primordial stew out of which new innovations can be forged. For example, Arvo Part's use of Renaissance polyphony in his works. But I am having a more difficult time categorizing more recent explosions. Take serialism, for example. While it's certainly been around for a while and won't elicit any angry reactions in the halls of (most) academies, it is also still very potent. Audiences have strong reactions to it, and it still carries the auro of the "modern." My question then is this: has serialism exploded yet and returned to a neutral state or is it still, in its way, doing its revolutionary work?
You are right: "explosion" has a vague meaning here. I was thinking more about your second definition, and accordingly I think it would be helpful to change "explosion" to "disintegration."
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