Is The History Of Classical Music One Of Continual Progress ?
This is a question which has caused a considerable amount of discussion and controversy among musicologists and music critics . Is the music of the 20th century progress over the music of the past , in the sense of say the advanced medicine of today being a progress over the primitive medical techniques and knowledge of past centuries ?
Certainly not . The 12-tone music of Arnold Schoenberg is not superior to the music of his great predecessors Bach , Mozart , Beethoven ,Wagner and Brahms , whose music Schoenberg studied diligently , revered and learned so much from , but neither is it a regression from the greatness of the past and a sign of decline . Classical music has evolved over the centuries ; it has neither progressed nor declined .
The traditional manner of classification of the periods of history in western classical music is Medieval music , from the establishment of musical notation and the emergance of Gregorian chant to the renaissance period of roughly A.D. 1400 to 1600 , the Baroque period from roughly 1600 to the mid 18th century , the classical period of approximately the mid 18th century to the early 19th , the Romantic period of the 19th and early 20th century , and 20th and early 21st century music .
What we call classical music (not to be confused with the music of the classical period when Haydn and Mozart flourished in the 18th century ,) has changed vastly over the centuries , and every period has seen the creation of many great works by a galaxy of great composers .
But while the music of the 20th century does not represent "progress " over the music of the past , neither does it show a "decline " from the great works of the past , as some critics and others would have us believe . Schoenberg has even been accused of "ruining " the music of the 20th century by breaking with tonality and influencing so many other composers of that era with his supposedly pernicious 12-tone system , even though many great 20th century composers never adopted his methods and abandoned tonality .
The late music American music critic and music historian Henry Pleasants (1910 - 1999 ) was one of those who bewailed the alleged "decline " of classical music in the 20th century and was extremely hostile to much "modern " music . He wrote an interesting if highly tendentious book called "The Agony Of Modern Music " in the 1950s which I believe is still available in which he flatly declared that most classical music of his time was worthless . Audiences hated it , and composers no longer strove to write music which would please audiences , unlike great composers of the past such as Bach , Haydn and Mozart .
To a certain extent he was right . Yes, many people in the 20th century have hated the music of Schoenberg and his school , as well as other avant-garde composers who emerged after him such as Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen , Milton Babbitt , Charles Wuorinen , Roger Sessions and others who have written thorny and intimidatingly complex music .
But does this show evidence of an overall "decline " from the music of the past ? I think not . Resistance to new music goes back centuries . Even the great Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi , the first important composer of operas , who also wrote other vocal masterpieces such as madrigals etc, and who lived from 1567 to 1643 , met with harsh criticism from other composers and theorists who objected to his innovations . Beethoven's radical innovations actually caused some critics and composers of the day to question his sanity ! Wagner , the great 19th century innovator of opera was considered the musical Antichrist by many . And so it goes . Composers who were once considered dangerous radicals in their time have achieved a lasting place in the musical canon .
And many composers who were prominent in their day and widely performed have become nothing but names familiar to those well-versed in music history . Composers such as Louis Spohr , Giacomo Meyerbeer , Reinhard Keiser , Baldassare Galuppi , William Boyce , Thomas Arne , Felix Draeseke , Cesar Cui and so many other names never achieved that lasting place in the canon despite the fleeting popularity of their music, now their works are occaisionally revived . We remember Antonio Salieri only because of his association with Mozart and certain legends about their relationship , even though Salieri's music is quite pleasant and not totally deserving of oblivion .
There has been great and hum drum music from every period ; most of the symphonies , operas , concertos , oratorios and other works of the past have been deservedly forgotten , although many estimable works have also been undeservedly neglected . It has been estimated that since the early 17th century , approximately 40,000 operas alone have been written ? How many are performed today ? We benefit today from the vast accumulation of all the classical music written over the centuries and we can now hear a wider variety of repertoire , live and recorded , than people have ever been able to hear in the past .