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In the future, what will be the NEXT development for classical music?

4K views 38 replies 19 participants last post by  Praeludium 
#1 ·
What do you think would be the next exciting development for classical music?

So far we have the

1. Renaissance

2. Baroque

3. Classical

4. Romantic

5. 20th century

6. Modern

Do you think Modern music would be more common place in the future or it will be still the same? What will be the technological advances that will make classical music more exciting? Is there will be a blockbuster classical composer that will surface like Beethoven or innovative ones like Schoenberg?

What do you want to see in the future of classical music? Share your thoughts.. :)
 
#2 · (Edited)
1. Renaissance

2. Baroque

3. Classical

4. Romantic

5. 20th century

6. Modern

7. Alien Music (music of extraterrestrials, maybe planet Uranus)
 
#5 · (Edited)
A resurgence of not only tonality, but diatonicism. A second wave of neo-classicism that uses modernist, atonal and minimalist aesthetics in the context of classical forms and diatonic contrast. An emphasis on drawing the listener in with drama will be encouraged, and slow, building introductions for pieces will be discouraged in favor of just throwing the listener straight into a fast, dramatic movement.

7. Alien Music (music of extraterrestrials, maybe planet Uranus)
I hear they wrote some incredible tuba concertos.
 
#8 ·
the polystylist qualities of Schnittke, Ives, Zappa, Albarn, Bjork, Kajiura, Uematsu, and Oldfield will only expand further and further until the distinctions between genres become beyond arbitrary and fall apart completely, and new ways of describing music will develope that are far more descriptive. Or something completely different.

Personally I have no idea what will come, but I think a tendency toward eclectic mixing of different things is most likely. We can see it in rock, pop, jazz and classical music.
 
#9 ·
You can see it in the kind of stuff that Kronos Quartet does with Wu Man, Asha Bhosle, Astor Piazzolla, John Zorn, Tan Dun - they don't care. You've got Yo-Yo Ma and Joshua Bell and so on playing Appalachian music with Bela Fleck, who plays with Chick Corea. It's a free-for-all. There is no longer bluegrass, jazz, tango, or classical. That is all history. Now there is just music.
 
#11 ·
It's a free-for-all. There is no longer bluegrass, jazz, tango, or classical. That is all history. Now there is just music.
I hate to be seen as some kind of reactionary, but does anyone else see this as kind of a unwanted and potentially dangerous new trend in music making?
 
#10 ·
and you have Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz (which is another glorious example of polystylism) composing operas for orchestras that consist of strings, brass, electric/rock instruments, Chinese instruments, rare instruments like the ondes martenot and toys like Casio keyboards and the Suzuki Omnichord (think a plastic electronic autoharp). And you had Frank Zappa basically using his rock band to play the complex instrumental music he was writing (including transcriptions of his chamber and orchestral material) alongside traditional rock and jazz and any other kind of music he wanted to write. I think a good way of looking at the future is that artists will be far more difficult to shoehorn and stereotype with images of styles.

Polystylism probably isn't a good word to use, because despite the huge array of kinds of music Schnittke, Ives, Zappa, and Albarn have composed, their own personal styles come through. Its not like they're writing in the voice of somebody else, even when they quote others' music. I'm not good at making up terms though, so just know when I say polystylism, I mean more that they use a variety of techniques and tropes in an eclectic, imaginative mix. :3
 
#17 ·
That being said, I agree with the neo-tonal prediction of future classical music. I think Schoenberg's later works, where he combined an atonal vocabulary while still retaining the triadic relationships of tonal harmony (Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte, Second Chamber Symphony) would lead to a very creative and accessible way of music making.
 
#18 ·
In the future, "classical music" would not be "classical" rather a mix of other genres. Is that everyone is saying?? I don't like it.
 
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#24 ·
The only hope I have for the future is that maybe people won't see the revolutions in the Modernist/Postmodernist era as this huge catalysmic crashing point anymore; they will see it as an extension of the classical tradition, whether you're writing tonally or atonally. Classical music has been through this before (Monteverdi and the Early Baroque's conversion from modality to a tonal system) and I think it can go through it again, as long as we find some kind of new common practice that can provide a common harmonic vocabulary.
 
#26 ·
I, for one, love the idea of all the musical genres melting down into a sea of LCL. I also think this is likely to happen, in the end.

Let the distinctions between tonality and atonality; medieval, baroque, classicism, romanticism, modernism, post-modernism and meta-modernism/new sincerity; academic music and folk music dissappear. Musical instrumentality, go, go, go!
 
#34 ·
I hate to be seen as some kind of reactionary, but does anyone else see this as kind of a unwanted and potentially dangerous new trend in music making?

AS in a giant, generic, McDonald's of music? Yes... I am not at all for that. I believe that the greatest art has always benefited from a cultural cross-pollination, which is one of the reasons that the arts always flourished in those major cities where contact with other nations thrived... whether through trade, immigration, or military conquest. But I am not all too thrilled with the idea of cultures losing their distinct individual "flavors" in trade for some generic cultural universalism.
 
#36 · (Edited)
There seems to be a tacit assumption that the "next big development," whatever it is, is going to cause old developments to disappear. Surely no one believes this is the case? Even if some cross-pollinating trend comes along that blurs the lines between jazz, classical, and pop (assuming that hasn't already happened a while ago), it's not like all other musicians will cease writing and performing "pure" jazz and classical and pop. After all, it's not like atonality killed tonality, electronic music killed instrumental music, etc. Everyone's current listening habits and preferences, whatever they may be, are not under threat. If there is a next big development, it's going to be an addition, not a replacement, to what we already have.
 
#39 ·
I think that we can't predict what the music will be, for two reason :
1) There are just so many very different things done at the same time that could be considered classical music. It goes in a lot of directions.
2) Unless one of our member is a prescient creative genius, we're not aware of what the next major new thing could be. We can only say roughly how what we know sound... I how was supposed to sound the music of the future for people living in the court of Versailles at the end of the XVIIth century.
 
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