Bob Draper ([log in to unmask]) wrote:

>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?

"Forward" implies "progress" which implies that later music is superior to
earlier.  I don't go along with this notion at all.  For all the "progress"
in the 19th century, did anyone write a greater piano concerto than
Mozart's finest?

>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.

"There will always be something new to be said in the key of C major"
        Arnold Schoenberg

(Of course, most people omit or forget the remainder of the quote "by
someone original enough to say it").

>Of course we could introduce 'new' ideas like accepting electronic
>synthesised music as 'classical'.

Boulez and others have been doing this for decades.

Deryk Barker
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