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The
Classical Music of the Twenty-First Century
by Don
Robertson
© 2000 by Don Robertson
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A Change of direction
After months in a tiny thatched-roof hut on a beautiful
deserted beach west of Progresso in the state of Yucatan,
Mexico, I felt purified. I now had a new direction to follow
in music: a positive direction. I knew now that John Cage had
performed the final straw for classical music: he had brought
it to a state of noise! I had read in a book by Peter Yates
about 20th Century music that "Music is born
out of the ordering of noise." I was now ready to start
anew.
In 1970, in a book called Kosmon, I wrote a series
of articles about music. In this book I explained the concept
of the duochord, the state of both pop and classical music,
and introduced my ideas on the relationship of music and
mathematics. I also wrote an article about various musical and
social influences, including negative music, and how they fit
into the cyclic duration of a society. At the end of the
duochord article, I made this bold prediction about the coming
changes in rock music:
"The Chinese called it indecent music.
During times of great negative influence, such as ours,
this indecent music appears. So what is it? Are we talking
about the sleepy banality of muzak: piped-in office music
and middle-of-the-road FM fare, or the speedy, nervous
energy of jazz, or the hardcore dissonance of so-called
"contemporary music" played in concert halls and
in movie houses and on our television tubes (providing
background for violence and horror flicks), or the
super-hostile electronically amplified music--the
culmination of all the above--that may manifest itself in
all its horrors during the 1970s?"
Aware of the changes that would occur musically during the
coming decade, I gave away my radios and my TV set in 1970. I
turned instead to the discovery, research, and enjoyment of
positive music, beginning with the great ancient traditions in
Western classical music: Gregorian chant and the music of
Victoria, Bach,
Palestrina,
Lassus, Josquin, Dufay and
Gallus.
As I studied each composer’s music and each musical period,
I purposely looked for music that was truly positive, glorious
and uplifting. By 1976, I had worked my way forward in time to
the music of Wagner,
Cesar Franck and Alexander
Scriabin…music
from the late 19th Century.
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