Around 100 years ago the physicist Lord Kelvin said something like 99% of
everything there is to know is now known.  He also described how the sun
shone by a process like burning coal.  Wrong, on both counts, though he
got a temperature scale and a title for his efforts.

It struck me that someone like Sibelius or Mahler might have said a similar
thing about music at the time.  After all the abiguities they were putting
into their works were stretching tonality to its limits.

Of course had they or anyone else said such a thing at the time they would
have been wrong because just around the corner Schoenberg et al were about
to upset the apple cart.  But did they really take us any further forward?
And was Ives "unanswered question" ever really answered?

At the close of this century it seems to me that the deconstruction has
literally go as far as is practicaly possible.  So I, therefore, make my
Kelvin-like assertion that a musical impasse has been reached and we have
literally nowhere else new to go.

Of course we could introduce 'new' ideas like accepting electronic
synthesised music as 'classical'.  But this would not take us any further
forward than the inclusion of extra instruments like harps in later 19c
symphonies did at the time.

No, I think we're now complete stuck at 1and a bit on my music scale.  This
runs from 1 to 100.  On this measure 1 represents completely random notes
whereas 100 represents a perfect tune like, say, the German National
anthem.

Now there's an attractive piece I wonder who wrote that!

Bob Draper
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