Saddos ....

[cloughie]

What do you think the answer might be?

Probably not but I’m unsure of what it might sound like - mind you if I knew I’d probably have a good try at writing it - it would probably reflect my infuencers which may mean it wasn’t really original.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I'm not sure. For one thing, "genres" aren't eternal things that come and go - opera, for example, didn't exist before the 17th century, and nothing really new has been done in "compositions conceived for the opera house" for half a century or so. A "thin period" might just mean that the genre is no longer relevant to the present state of cultural evolution, except in so far as it perpetuates some supposedly important institution that emerged in a previous period, like the aforementioned opera house. If we see a lack of vitality in popular music we might just be looking for it in the wrong place! Not that I'm claiming to be an expert, you understand.

The same could be said of the novel - both had their heyday in the 19th century. However I think they are still hanging in there - just . I guess the most profitable and productive ‘new’ genre is game music .

[RichardB]

Probably not but I’m unsure of what it might sound like - mind you if I knew I’d probably have a good try at writing it - it would probably reflect my infuencers which may mean it wasn’t really original.

Hang on, you've lost me there - unsure of what what might sound like?

[RichardB]

The same could be said of the novel - both had their heyday in the 19th century. However I think they are still hanging in there - just.

My feeling is that the novel is so to speak in a very healthy state at this point in time, as opposed to opera!

[cloughie]

Hang on, you've lost me there - unsure of what what might sound like?

Well if it’s original by definition it’s new so how will anyone know what it sounds like - let alone like it?

[Serial_Apologist]

If there were, is there any reason to suppose it's been reached?

I well remember this question being asked by jazz musicians of roughly my generation (b.1945) at the beginning of the eighties, who were asking, "Where is there to go after 'free?'". They still felt their most creative work to be in that area of jazz, feeling that the jazz-rock fusion they had participated in during the previous decade had run its course. And this was also the period in which straight ahead modern jazz of the 1950s and early 1960s, before Miles Davis and others had started "going electric", was beginning to be promoted by those labelled "the Young Turks" in the States, led by Wynton Marsalis. Wynton's initial return, in particular, to that period still seen by many whose continuing faith in the capacity of jazz to renew itself in our present time hinges on the expansions of possibilities to be followed up on that had been epitomised by Miles Davis's quintet with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. And yet, their journey often turned out to take further steps backwards, as if obsessively in search of some illusory perfection of what had been achieved when it was relevant to its time. Like Boulez's remark about the tastes in furniture of the rich in going for the styles of 200 years ago. This is going to sound maybe dogmatic, but it has long seemed to me that the greatest art, if one may so describe it, either epitomises the greatest thoughts of its time, whether that be in the arts, philosophy or sciences, or, by inferences deducible in the light of later reflection, anticipates them.

Composers including Eliot Carter, Anthony Braxton, Jonathan Harvey and Richard Barrett all exhibit that spirit of enquiry and inquisitiveness that takes music further than anyone might have imagined before they came onto the scene, even though each of these figures may in some instances have serious differences with the others. They may or may not be working with technical means that lie beyond the understanding of many a music lover nevertheless open to, and appreciative of their music, because one perceives in it a sense of authority transcendent of underlying complexities because one feels the composer to inhabit his or her musical world: they are so to speak at one with it, rather than having it control them. If their intuition leads them down pathways of great complexity it could be argued that this reflects how intuitively attuned they are, as compared to others who prefer escape routes! Intuition one feels can operate at high levels of sophistication - it is the cumbersomeness of language and the ways we explain the workings of nature that are complex, not the workings in or of themselves. I would venture to suggest that one reason why some of us are attracted to such music is that we feel that by analogy it expresses the ever-growing complexity of the modern world: trying to come to terms, armed with outdated terms of reference in need of re-assessment if mentally and spiritually we are going to keep our heads above the water line and not succumb to retrogression.

[jayne lee wilson]

Not in your recordings of the year then?

You like that Jayne? - it’s dreadful!

It came out in 2012.
First time I saw Nicki do it was live on a BBC Glasto Relay .... I couldn't keep still & thought about it for days after.
I just got my first flatscreen, and the sound was terrible so I'd wired two Tivoli Model Ones in as stereo speakers. I had to leap across to them and whack up two manual volume controls!

Starships was used very wittily last year in the Sky Resident Alien series..... its become a classic dance anthem now, for all genders and all ages....
Once that beat kicks in, I can't stop laughing, moving and often crying too for sheer joy.......

I'm on the floor, floor
I love to dance
So give me more, more, 'til I can't stand

[Serial_Apologist]

It came out in 2012.
First time I saw Nicki do it was live on a BBC Glasto Relay .... I couldn't keep still & thought about it for days after.
I just got my first flatscreen, and the sound was terrible so I'd wired two Tivoli Model Ones in as stereo speakers. I had to leap across to them and whack up two manual volume controls!

Starships was used very wittily last year in the Sky Resident Alien series..... its become a classic dance anthem now, for all genders and all ages....
Once that beat kicks in, I can't stop laughing, moving and often crying too for sheer joy.......

I'm on the floor, floor
I love to dance
So give me more, more, 'til I can't stand

I find it astonishing that so unrobotic a person as yourself could dance to that kind of music!

[RichardB]

Well if it’s original by definition it’s new so how will anyone know what it sounds like - let alone like it?

Your original question was: "is there a finite limit on originality?" - which I took to mean: will a point be reached where originality is no longer possible? But it seems that wasn't what you were asking! Sorry, I got the wrong end of the stick there.

So what you were asking was "is there a limit to the originality a single thing can have?" My answer to that one is that I don't think the idea of "originality" lends itself to such a pseudo-quantitative approach. Newness is always relative to a certain context, in which it creates new insights. For example: you could say that if in 1820 someone had invented Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique it would have been even more "original" than it was when he devised it a hundred years later. But there's no way anyone could have had such an idea in 1820 because there was no context for it. So I don't think a creative musician can decide to produce something "original", they can only decide to develop their individual way of hearing and thinking to the point where their insight into their particular context produces something new. "Original" is often interpreted as "not like anything else", but it's actually more complex than that. "Not like anything else" is the easy part.

[jayne lee wilson]

I find it astonishing that so unrobotic a person as yourself could dance to that kind of music!

I was hitting the dancefloor to Chic in the 70s, New Order in the 80s, Primal Scream in the 90s......... Starships is just pure primal rhythmical exhilaration, like them....
Nothing robotic but very ecstatic, about the slow climax on Meant to fly/reach the sky....but all this is just instinctive, really, very physical...

[RichardB]

I well remember this question being asked by jazz musicians of roughly my generation (b.1945) at the beginning of the eighties, who were asking, "Where is there to go after 'free?'". They still felt their most creative work to be in that area of jazz, feeling that the jazz-rock fusion they had participated in during the previous decade had run its course.

I see you interpreted Cloughie's question the same way I did!

[Joseph K]

I was hitting the dancefloor to Chic in the 70s, New Order in the 80s, Primal Scream in the 90s......... Starships is just pure primal rhythmical exhilaration, like them....
Nothing robotic but very ecstatic, about the slow climax on Meant to fly/reach the sky....but all this is just instinctive, really, very physical...

You've got me listening to some techno!

[Ein Heldenleben]

My feeling is that the novel is so to speak in a very healthy state at this point in time, as opposed to opera!

You must be reading different ones to the eighty odd contemporary novels I’ve read this year . There’s a lot of ok stuff but precious few classics. Thing is writing a novel and getting it published is way easier than getting an opera written and produced - too easy perhaps ?

[RichardB]

You must be reading different ones to the eighty odd contemporary novels I’ve read this year. There’s a lot of ok stuff but precious few classics. Thing is writing a novel and getting it published is way easier than getting an opera written and produced - too easy perhaps ?

Maybe not the right thread, but I can think of half a dozen novels published in the last year or two that I found very powerful in their different ways (and original!), which is half a dozen more than the new operas I've heard that had a comparable effect.

[cloughie]

You must be reading different ones to the eighty odd contemporary novels I’ve read this year . There’s a lot of ok stuff but precious few classics. Thing is writing a novel and getting it published is way easier than getting an opera written and produced - too easy perhaps ?

Particularly if you are a ‘celebrity’ who has written in lockdown!