The End of Music History, Part 2, or “Positive Peregrinations in the 21st Century”
I must apologize for taking such a long break; life often has a way of catching up with us at inopportune times, and the past month or so has been fraught, so to speak, with more than its share of drama and unexpected responsibilities. Having said that, however, let’s attend to the matter at hand.
First, let’s return for a moment to Tom Service’s admirable lecture, “So long and thanks for all the noise: 2010 and the end of musical history.” Part of the reason that this title so caught my attention was that I found it puzzling that any “history” could end at all. Surely history, whether it be political, human, or musical, will never end, unless we are wiped out by a cataclysm so great that there is no one left to record it. Of course, as I mentioned in the first part of this disquisition, that definition is, apparently, not what Mr. Service had in mind, for as he says, “…there are still some composers, institutions, and ideologies out there who are laboring under the misapprehension that what they’re doing is the single true path, the way of the future, the sole route to enlightenment, and the real reflection of our times…” and I have a feeling that this attitude is truly what has—or surely should—come to an end in the 21st century.
