Musical paradigm shifts
I was browsing through some old music textbooks and came across a couple of cardboard name tags that read
ETSU
Summer Camper
1982
Evidently I took Renaissance and Baroque music that spring or fall. I worked for the music department’s Summer Camps while in graduate school, with a six-year old. This is not extraordinary on the surface, except that it reminded me of one of my favorite phenomenons–monumental changes in thinking, or paradigm shifts. This happens in music, too. Graduate studies in musicology examine the transition between the great eras–the Baroque, Romantic, et al. When did a new sound or rhythm appear in compositions of the day? Who changed and how? Who else was involved? Who are the exemplars? When did it gel into common practice?
Things were pretty tame until the 13th and 14th century. The cataclysmic, orgiastic Medieval/Renaissance divide. Think Dorothy stepping out of her sepia-colored farmhouse into the super-saturated colors of Oz. The Age of Humanism was a creative explosion not just of the arts, but government, the sciences, and all the parts of the flower.
Now that was some paradigm shift. I tend to get very excited about that sort of thing–the mashup of music, peak experiences, creativity, and the universe. Another earthquake happened in the 1930’s–the new compositional technique of manipulating sound electronically.
Edgar Varese is the man. He began experimenting with non-traditional sounds on instruments such as the trombone, trumpet, and percussion. He was the first composer to write for siren. Cool, huh? Check out his Octandre. The man became enamored of magnetic recording tape and went into isolation for ten years. He emerged as the father of electronic music, having explored the possibilities for a decade. Those paradigms tend to be quite powerful.
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