"It is possible to chart a strong historical narrative through the history of Western classical music from the Renaissance through the mid-20th century. To conceive of such a narrative is to indulge in historicism which may not always match historical reality on the more local scale. But the forming of such a historical narrative does allow one to view vast swathes of musical and cultural development and thus formulate a philosophy of Western classical music, which can explain why it is that things are as they are now. Such a narrative, which advances and regresses at turns, follows a line of development from the gradual formalization of the tonal system to the emancipation of dissonance and the later formalizations of music into forms such as serialism, in the early 20th century. This master narrative followed developments in other art-forms, philosophy, and socio-political movements, from the breaking down of European feudal societies, the forging of republics, industrialisation, the growth of the middle-class, fascism, and the rise of neo-liberalism in the 20th century. The constituent parts of music were essentially the same throughout this period and I wish to explore this in depth in this paper. But in the 1960s certain composers turned their gaze from the high Modernism of the classical tradition and looked to jazz and Indian music as their models. Composers such as Terry Reilly and La Monte Young forged a musical language which valued repetition and consonance, simplicity and directness above mathematical constructs. John Cage also brought the experimentalism of artists such as Andy Warhol into music: the Brillo Box of Warhol would see an analogy in the conceptual music and sound objects of Cage."
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- bill 3-21-2015 10:58 am