Okay, I'm greedy, but by the end of the century items like this will be a dime a dozen. What will people think of, musicwise, when they think of this century? What are the best songs, the best bands, etc.? What had the most significance? Will it be more prominent now that music is actually recorded?56 responses total.
Well, I can start out by saying that some of the greatest artists included Woody Guthrie and the Beatles. But will Rock and Roll really be music for the ages? Seems a bit optimistic. How about the song of the century? :)
The 20th century gets credit for jazz, which seems like it will be around for a while. Ellington is already being absorbed into the academy. The century is also notable for the end of the popular opera tradition. When Puccini died in 1926, leaving TURANDOT incomplete, the era of enduring operas also died. From the business end, operas were being badly squeezed by the motion picture; from the artistic end, operas were caught up in the general popular revulsion against contemporary serious music. The Broadway musical is, more or less, the successor to opera, and I expect a decent number of musicals, mostly from those created between 1920 and 1970, to endure. "Cats" will still be running. :)
Do you really expect there to be a single song that sums up this century, senna? Name me the one song that springs to mind immediately when you think of the 1700's. For that matter, name me the one song that everyone thinks of when they think of the 1960's. Or even a specific year--what was the single most important song of 1967? Even the music of a single year is too varied and complicated to sum up. I think one of this century's major legacies will be the existence of popular music as a 'serious' undertaking. In the past, from what I have seen, the equivalent of popular music has been folk music, which was not treated as worthwhile until it was refined and civilized into a court dance of some sort...
re 1967: Light my Fire - The Doors
At the beginning of the Century we had just begun recording
performers and just got into recording technology. Buy the end of
the Century good recording technology has come so far, many of us
can do it at home. Songs are now shared, not only by broadcast,
but also by cablecast, narrowcast, & microcast technologies. Since
the record player had just about wiped out play at home music, it
has again come back strong in the last few decades of this century,
more than ever, making music by yourself or with few others is done
for the fun of it. The century began with just about all the songs
being written in Tin Pan Alley, the commercial zone of the young
record music industry. In the 1960's we learned that commercial
music can come from anywhere. Now look around you, if I where to
ask who all has written a song that was performed before others, many
in this crowd would raise their hand.
Song of the Century? Each of us would probably have their
own pick. Music of the century? As noted above, we have seen new
types of music come about in this century, Jazz, Rock & Roll, the
stage musical, the movie musical, the idea of a song of the week--
the 'Your Hit Parade/American Top 40' has expanded a musical industry.
The idea that a 'new' folk song can be written is so common nowdays
that is one way be define folk music/acousitic music these day.
These days, we can and we do listen to the rest of the world's
music with patience, intrigue and desire. We pick of influences and
add them to our music---ever think you would have seen someone pick
of a Dumbeck and play along with Woody Guthrie on one of his songs?
Today alternate instruments are not so alternative in whatever music
you can talk about.
Oh yes, Country & Western is also a unique music; born in the
USA, as is this century's Rhythm & Blues, Blues, Bluegrass, Gospell,
Soul and the now many names of Rock&Roll.
Electric and electronic instruments.
I wouldn't exactly say that Country & Western was born in the USA; the genre is itself a merger of two genres that were once separate, and has strong ties to European folk, especially Irish. Rock 'n Roll isn't an American-born genre, either. It was really rhythm and blues until a disc jockey dubbed it with this name so he could play it while avoiding the racism of the day. Jazz is the music that was born here in the U.S., in most experts' opinions. It can be tied to a specific place: New Orleans. Also, most foreign countries regard it as exotic and intriguing. Ironically, they seem to appreciate it more than we do-- especially Europe-- which is a shame since the music is indeed our own. (Although the music has some Afrocentric influences, the soun ds of the Carribean are closer to traditional African music) It will be likely that our century will be best remembered for global music exchange. So many cultures, so many instruments, so many musicians, and so many styles have transcended genres.
I was misunderstood, but by all means carry on :)
Re: a while back (working with a terminal program that won't scroll) See? I don't know what I would have picked off hand for '67's song, but Light My Fire would not have been it.
What types of music and which performers were popular in the different decades? For instance folk style music (Simon and Garfunkel, Judy Collins) in the sixties and seventies. Big band in the forties. Fifties?
I'd disagree that C&W is not uniquely American. .
In the great variety of the 20th century, it's almost misleading to attach decades to a given style of music. I get annoyed at the tv documentary practice of underlining pictures of a period with the music we associate with it. Nobody will ever make a documentary film of the life of my mother, but if they did, I'm sure they'd back pictures of her youth in the 1940s with the sounds of big bands and Frank Sinatra. Well, she hated big bands, and Frank Sinatra never did anything for her.
Good point. American music hasn't ever been a homogenous, unified thing. It's always consisted of many separate movements which sometimes move in parallel, sometimes collide, sometimes comingle..
Hrm. True. As someone who has only paid attention to music in the past 5 years or so, the only sense I have of what was listened to when was sources like David mentions - movie soundtracks and the like. Kind of makes me wonder how accurate they are -- f'rinstance, would someone who was there at the time and _hadn't_ seen all the movies since then still think disco was the defining music of the '70s? I have trouble believing that one in particular.
Based on what I remember my sisters and older brother listening to during that time period, disco might as well have not existed (depending on your definition, I guess.. I'm still not exactly sure what counts as disco..)
See, that's the impression I get too. Everyone I know who was alive then was listening to funk, or to prog rock, or to heavy metal, or just ignoring popular music altogether.
A musicologist who was quoted for an MTV documentary on music in the 1990s pointed out that even definable trends generally are observed in half-decades, and not full ones. Remember how different pop music was in the early '90s? Believe me, attaching dates to ANY musical style is a big headache. Musicologists of the standard Eurocentric styles (Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Modern, and Post-Modern) disagree all the time. For example, I would say Debussy was the lone Impressionist composer of his day although he is often lumped with many of his contemporaries in either the Late Romantic period or the early 20th century. Many composers bridge styles, and one could assume that music changed in a more fluid manner than the historians suggest. Mozart, Schubert, and Beethoven all foreshadowed the Romantic period, and the last of the three composers illustrated the change most strongly; Beethoven is included in both the Classical and Romantic periods by some musicologists. I've noticed that even nostalgia can't be pinned down to a decade. The movie _Grease_ came out in 1978 (the peak of the disco era), although I remember '50s nostalgia more during the first half of the '80s. Then it was '60s nostalgia, and some have bounced back and forth between '60s and '70s retro ever since. And then swing and jive came into popularity, which recalls the 1940's..
(50's nostalgia was pretty widespread in the 70s.. "Happy Days", anyone?)
...not to mention the fact that nostalgia isn't usually too careful about getting times and dates right. I remember hearing a rant somewhere about the dance, the music, and the clothing from the swing revival coming from three different decades, but I don't remember it clearly enough to repeat it...
So the Song of the Century is easy: it should be a classic and be timeless. Hands down, it has to be Gershwin's "Summertime"
"Too Drunk To Fuck" DKs
If I had to sum up the whole music of the century thing, I would say Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue . . .
Re #20: That was my runner-up
how can a song released in thte first half of the century truly represent the music of the century? The Theme to the Simpsons. It represents multiple cultural trends: It has a pop tempo, it uses a jazz flourish (each time, in fact, Lisa plays something different on the sax), it uses a classical music background, it's a TV theme song rather than a stand alone piece of music, and it was written by someone who got their start in pure pop music but has since segued into a broad range of theme music for movies and TV shows, which have after all replaced the operas and ballets of yesteryear. (DAnny Elfman, erstwhile of Oingo Boingo.) Elfman's theme songs in general mix pop sentiment, classical instrumentation, and jazz undertones (others include Batman and Nightmare Before Christmas), but The Simpsons theme alone carries the other burdens -- instant recognizability by anyone in the culture, ful aesthetic relevance to the topic, and an ability to withstand time and changes in trends. I'm serious, here. Get off the floor and stop laughing.
re #23: "how can a song released in the first half of the century.."? You're absolutely right. If you examine the results of any popular poll taken to find the best song, movie, etc., of some fixed time period (a century, say, or a decade) you will clearly find, time after time, poll after poll, that the very best songs, movies, etc. of the period are overwhelmingly weighted (75% or more) to works created during the final 10-15% of the time period in question. By this reasoning, "Rhapsody in Blue" is a horrible choice, because most of the people alive today to vote on the best work couldn't even hum a few bars. The only sensible choice for work of the century, therefore, is Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On", at least until another few years have passed and many of us breathe a huge sigh of relief as it slips from the collective planetary memory.
<giggles and tries not to choke on what she was drinking> "Rhapsody in Blue" is the song they play in those there airline commercials, eh? ;-)
heh
#24> I thought we were discussing the song most representative of the 20th C. Clearly the "best" song (from an aesthetic viewpoint) could just have easily been released in 1901 as in 1999... but the 1901 song could in no way be considered to "represent" the 20th C.; it would be, at best, a culmination of the *19th* C., and an indicator of things to come. I don't question the musical and artistic superiority of Gershwin over the Simpsons (or Dion, for that matter); but which best *represents* the 20th C.? Certainly not Gershwin.
Reading back, I see that, indeed, there is a tendency to exchange "best" and "sum up" with grand abandon in this item... so to clarify, I'm talking about the tune that is most REPRESENTATIVE of the changes in music over the course of the century. There would be no real way to indicate the "best" song or artistic piece of any time period; I ignored that part of the discussion because it's silly and pointless. My criteria for "most representative": -- Cultural ubiquity. In addition to "The Simpsons," obvious candidates include The Jeopardy Theme, The National Geographic Theme, The Theme to Jaws, Star Wars, and The Girl from Ipanema (which has become so ubiquitous that nearly EVERYBODY knows the tune, but few people know the name) (Think elevators). -- Relevance to other entertainment. Multimedia became a major issue in the 20th C.; the relationship between music and other forms of entertainment has oscillated in the past, from a time when ballets and symphonies were firmly wedded, to a time when travelling minstrels were on the edges of entertainment. So a trait of the 20th C. would be incorporation of music with other forms of entertainment. Note that most of the ubiquitous tunes are TV or movie themes; this century saw the creation of the jingle, as well, which are terminally perky. -- Pop-py. Popular music has always been the most common form of music, and tastes change constantly. No single piece could characterize the musical trends of the entire century, which shifted from jazz and swing to R&R, C&W, and so forth, but at least The Simpsons theme captures a few of the major highlights, and Lisa's jazz jam allows for the incorporation of just about any popular style you'd care to come up with (except, perhaps, folk). -- Lack of historical depth. This is where the rift between "best" and "most representative" is most obvious. "Good" music is typically heavily laden with historical depth, but -- as the flourishing of pop music, ever fickle, and the meandering of classical music demonstrates -- the 20th C. didn't care much for depth. Even at the height of industrial groups like NIN and Marilyn Manson, recent forebears like Gary Numan and Brian Eno didn't get more than occasional "oh yeahs" from fans... grunge was hopelessly American Bland, but if it didn't bear the Seattle mark, it wasn't grunge -- even if it sounded IDENTICAL to grunge, and had been released only a few years prior... Paul Simon sang that "Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts," and furthermore, that generation fails to see the roots. I'll admit that my own blues collection, for instance, consists of Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Jonny Lang, a pair of young punks with talent but no roots. A second candidate for "most representative" comes to me from this discussion: Kid Rock's "Cowboy." Here we have American C&W combined with rap/hip-hop in an act that represents 20th C. Pop Music Trends at their finest: A white guy singing black music and outselling just about any black rap artist (KR's "Devil Without a Cause" is now 8x Platinum). Both Kid Rock and Eminem were mentored to varying degrees by black rappers (KR boasts of "touring with Ice Cube," while Eminem's link to Dr Dre is famous), and yet both outsell their black predecessors (further irony comes from the fact that Detroit, known for its sizable black community, has managed to turn out three of the best-selling white rap groups -- ICP being the third -- and no significant black rappers; the black musicians instead developping a musical style (techno) that was to be usurped and identifed primarily with white Europeans, except among the fan base). Adding the black-by-white to the bizarre fusion of C&W to heavy metal and rap, the instant ubiquity and equally instant amnesia of "Cowboy," its overall milquetoast blandness, its TV tie-in (hey, the video features Gary Coleman in a gunfight with Joe C.), the sideshow mentality of the band (so far as having a resident midget, something even hopelessly glam Bowie, Manson, and Monster Magnet didn't even stopp to), and the absence of historical depth (not only is KR's retrospective arrogantly albeit humorously entitled "History of Rock", but he re-recorded many of the tracks because he couldn't find the tape masters!), "Cowboy" provides ample competition for "The Simpsons" as "most representative of 20th C. music." But hey, I like Kid Rock, and Danny Elfman for that matter. And yeah, I know their music is crap, artistically speaking, but it's GOOD crap. And therein lies yet another way in which they represent the century. Lots of good crap.
In my overly oblique way, I guess what I was trying to say was that I think the criteria you're judging with are nearly as biased by fin-de-siecle (sorry, I've just always wanted to use that in a sentence) considerations as the polls which "prove" that Celine Dion is the World's Greatest Artist. Sure, from our standpoint here in the year 2000 it naturally seems like the 20th century was all about technology and television and mass-market multimedia entertainment. But would everyone who lived in the 20th century necessarily see those as its defining themes?
Also Sprach Zarathustra.
troublesome waters: Maybelle Carter pretty much sums up the century.
I would take as "representative" of a time period a work which demonstrates the culmination of that time period, so it would always be weighted toward the end of that time period. I don't think that's bias. If you want to say we're arguing semantics, fine, we're arguing semantics, but the culmination of the 20th C. -- the significant cultural differences between 1901 and 1999 -- were technology, TV, and mass-market multimedia. Actually, another significant theme of the 20th C. is the shift in war from an us-v-them to an us-v-HIM... that is, the creation of true "villains" in war: Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Hussein, Idi Amin, Noriega. But nobody's mentioned any songs about war, or about that cultural shift. And technically, it's fin-de-mille. ;}
"Let's Have a War" by FEAR
Something from the beginning of the century can be just as representative of all the trends brighn mentions as something from the end of the century. Louis Armstrong, for instance: cultural ubiquity (everyone's heard that voice, whether they know it or not), relevance to other forms of entertainment (the combination of show tunes with blues, plus a few movie appearances and lots of playing in brothels), poppy, lack of historical depth (even when Armstrong became drafted as the unofficial "ambassador of American music," he refused to be dignified or "historical" about it; he just took it as an excuse to travel a bit more). The combination of blues and mainstream popular music which Armstrong represents is the beginning of a trend which has continued throughout the century and given birth to the two larges pop music styles, jazz and rock and roll. Armstrong doesn't have quite the surreal black-to-white crossover effect that Kid Rock has, but he was one of the first to bring black music to a white audience in a form other than minstrel shows and vaudeville acts. Does that count? I'm not sure if I'd actually vote for Armstrong as "most representative musician." I'm just using him as an example to point out that someone can be representative of this century by presaging and influencing coming changes, and not necessarily just by summing those changes up. (At least by Paul's criteria from resp:28)
"Oh, Death!" Dock Boggs :)
Valid points, ori.
You're So Vain (you probably think this song is about you)
- Carly Simon
I will put in a vote for Also Sprach Zarathrusta.. Stanley Kubrick's screenplay of Arthur C. Clarke's novel _2001_ did a *lot* to keep that Strauss tune remembered.
(Also Sprach Zarathustra would be disqualified inmy book in light ofits being written in 1895-6).
I'd say its impact in the 20th century far exceeds that in the 19th...
oh but that's a different line, then... what musical piece had the most INFLUENCE on 20th C. music? That would most certainly be something written before 1940.
#0 does not specifically ask about music written in the 20th century...
#0 and #40 have 39 posts betwixt representing various drifts and modifications to the question, and new questions raised.
I'm afraid that most people couldn't bring themselves to listen to the entire A.S.Z. - it runs 15-20 minutes. People hear the opening "fanfare" and think "that's the piece". That's the same mentality that thinks by hearing the fanfare of the last section of the William Tell Overture "that's the piece".
or the first four notes of Betthoven's fifth?
Or Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi and think that's all of Carmina Barundi. It's a common phenomenon.
"That is the piece, that is the piece, that is the piece, t-h-a-t's the piece." :-)
I own a recording of the entire A.S.Z.
If you mean the one by Orff, it's Carmina Burana. Although I suppose a compilation of African nationalist songs might be able to pass under the title of Carmina Burundi. I don't wanna think about it, really.
<laughs really hard>
I can't spell, and I can't count. Maybe I should just give up. :(
Don't give up. Then I'd have to find someone else to mock. :)
If only A.S.Z. did run 15-20 minutes. Actually it's about 50 minutes of (imho) tedium after that wonderful opening. The 20th-century piece of classical music with the most influence on the rest of the 20th century was surely _Le Sacre du Printemps_ (The Rite of Spring) by Igor Stravinsky. If we go back further for influence, where do we stop? When Oogamagoog the Neanderthal first banged on a hollow log, surely that had an immeasurable influence on all subsequent music.
don't be absurd. Oogamagoog was highly derivative, and got most of his ideas from Yakakaka, who was rarely credited in his own time and nearly all but forgotten now
Hahahaha! (And don't forget how much his music declined after he married Frigga)
(I used to have this wonder "Life in Hell" cartoon that traced all forms of music from their beginningns in things like "Primitive squirrel screeching", leading to things like "Bubblegum pop". Rock combined with ADD produced grunge, etc. I think I left it on a fridge in a previous house)
You have several choices: