I would like to give a systematic set of predictions — some general and abstract, some more precise and concrete — for the coming year. I make predictions not principally to make a ‘prophecy’ about the future. Rather, I wish to test, in a very loose way, my analysis of the present by extending current … Continue reading The art of questioning: A complete set of predictions for 2023
Tag: Requiem
How music survived: The turn from romanticism to jazz
Modern music began with J. S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, which laid the foundations for a new harmonic structure of overlapping melodies to replace the medieval unison chorus, and Renaissance eclecticism. Bach took folk tunes and made them the ‘themes’ of his new architecture. After Bach’s ‘baroque era’ of the early eighteenth century, Mozart developed the … Continue reading How music survived: The turn from romanticism to jazz
From Bach to Born: A philosophy of music
Recently I’ve been writing about music. The study of music from a philosophical perspective is often ridiculed, as it is traced to the work of critical theorist Theodor Adorno, who preferred Bach and Beethoven to Mozart and jazz music (preferring not to comment on the decrepit condition of popular music). Adorno played the piano, but … Continue reading From Bach to Born: A philosophy of music
Edmund Wilson 