Bob Draper:

>At the close of this century it seems to me that the deconstruction has
>literally go[ne] as far as is practically 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.

Now why didn't your reading of Lord Kelvin make you more cautious!? There
is always somewhere new to go, and even if you don't "go," there is still
the possibility of something new.  (As Mr. Macawber kept saying, something
is bound to turn up.  Someone once asked me where I went to find subjects
for my photographs and I said it wasn't where you go but what you see
there.  Thoreau said of himself that he was widely travelled in Concord.)

If the next stylistic turn were within sight, it would already have
arrived.  It is the element of surprise that signals something new and
original and refreshing.

The end of the "modern" era probably means more that both audiences and
creative artists are exhausted from constant stylistic innovation rather
than that the "supply" of stylistic innovations is exhausted.  The history
of Twentieth Century music has shown that "everything is permitted,"
perhaps, but surely not that everything has been done.  There will be
renewal; we just don't know where and from whom it will come or what
direction it will take.

My own expectation is that strikingly original creativity will continue
to come from composers who will find things to say musically from within
themselves and who are true to themselves in setting it down.

Jim Tobin