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 21^st century.

I will admit that the majority of my interaction in the world of composition is not with the Great and the Good; I move in decidedly small circles, and these days discuss the greater philosophical questions only as much as is required. But even far removed from the empyreum musices I encounter much of this same misapprehension, both from the direction of those who scorn composers who are “too backward-looking,” and from those who decry the modernists as being “unable to write a melody.” There is frequently so much of this reciprocal mud-slinging that one is tempted to believe that there must be some underground society of normative musicology or music theory, complete with  secret handshakes and funny hats, of which many of us remain unaware. I do not know if I actually coined the term “normative musicology” or not—I very much doubt it—but I was trying to define a concept that I find very much in operation in many circles. It is strange, perhaps, to work so hard to give a name to a mode of thought that I find particularly off-putting, but I find that naming a thing is a certain acknowledgement that it truly exists, and it would be disingenuous to claim that prescriptive music theory (or worse, prescriptive musicology) does not stalk many parts of the land, so to speak. (Even more insidious is proscriptive music theory. Then again, perhaps the two go hand in hand.)

If you do not believe that such things can happen, try to recall any conversation you may have had with a fellow musician or music enthusiast in which one party or another held forth (usually at length) on why the Second Viennese School (or Stravinskian neo-classicism—prejudice works both ways) was a big mistake, and should never have happened, as though we were able to reach back through time and erase all the “errors” and wrong-turns made by our predecessors. Frankly, I resent music history being put to such uses; I may be thinking in rather simple terms, but surely history is the record of what has happened, and not, according to the historian, what should have happened? Having this immense record of creativity behind us—left to us as a legacy, as it were—how can we then take it upon ourselves to say, “This part counts—this was good” and the reverse—“This shouldn’t have happened; we will pretend it never did.”

At the beginning of this century, faced with the cosmic array of choices that we have today and the global awareness that we surely have of music of past times and other cultures, how can it be remotely possible that we should willfully erase all of that knowledge—all of that material—and insist on proceeding down someone else’s “one true path”? How, for that matter, can it be possible to insist that our own innovations (if such creatures still exist) might qualify as that path? Given that directive, should all of us miraculously insist on following it, it would not, after all, be surprising if “music history” should truly come to an end. As Mr. Service says, “…is it enough to write music that ultimately will probably only ever be accessed by a tiny minority of new music nerds, as opposed to even attempting to communicate with a wider public, and having a genuine chance of changing people’s minds or influencing their approach to the world?”

So, continue to innovate—find new ways to express yourself through music. Surely with the new explosion in technology that brings us new ways to be creative almost every day, this should certainly be a propitious time for new approaches to music, to concertizing, and to the development of new institutions and audiences. But remember that the past continues to speak, as well. In the quote attributed to Ambrose Bierce, “There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don’t know.” I think, for instance, of the superlative creations of Uri Caine, whose riffs on Mahler and Bach certainly do not introduce truly new material, but demonstrate exciting new and yes, innovative approaches to that material. I was also recently introduced to the music of Brian Carpenter, who has written some phenomenal pieces for his American Gothic trilogy with Beat Circus, but also has an exciting new album with his Ghost Train Orchestra of arrangements of ‘20s and ‘30s music from Chicago and Harlem called “Hothouse Stomp.” I’m sure there are many who think that such pieces should not be included in any conversation about “serious music” in the 21^st century, but I disagree. It is the very eclectic nature of all of this music—this looking backward and forward simultaneously—and the freeing of soi-disant serious music from symphony-hall constraints that makes this such an exciting time to be writing.

To conclude with a final quote from Mr. Service, “Composers still need to make choices, of course; being open to the rest of the world does not guarantee the creation of great, or even good art in and of itself, and they will have to find their own limitations, draw their own lines in the shifting sands of musical culture. But composing without the fear of traducing the absurd unwritten laws of modernist composition will only be a good thing.”

Will there be a Part 3? Who can say?