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From: wjm@whuxj.UUCP (MITCHELL)
Newsgroups: net.music.classical
Subject: Re: Modern Classical Music
Message-ID: <253@whuxj.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 30-May-84 15:21:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: whuxj.253
Posted: Wed May 30 15:21:34 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 2-Jun-84 07:18:34 EDT
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Inc.
Lines: 22

While I'm pleased to see that Yosi Hoshen agrees with my feelings about modern
classical music, I hope that his view of the future is not accurate, and that
all the "listenable" works have not yet been written.  I once read an
paper in one of the audio or communication theory journals along those lines,
addressing the fact that there were only N listenable patterns of sound (let
us say digital encodings of a given work of music - we can without loss of
generality leave the method of encoding the written score totally arbitrary -
although some coding schemes are more efficient (use less bits to encode a
given work) than others).  Although N is a large number, it is finite and
at some time T, all N patterns will be discovered.  This author contended that
T was reached some time in the 1940's and therefore we have no hope of
a future Beethoven benefiting our society.  Personally, I disagree, since I
think N is extremely large.  Although, as I mentioned in my original article
that began this discussion, I am disturbed by "modern" classical music, I still
hope that a new composer will come up with some works that I'll enjoy as much
as I enjoy those by Dvorak, Brahms, and Mahler.
One thing that gives me some hope is that I still like some new music on the
popular side of the house (For now I'll include jazz here).  Not hard rock,
but some new jazz works, recent country songs, and some recent show/movie
music.  Perhaps this will provide the inspiration Composer X needs to write
his Symphony, Piano Concerto, or whatever.
Bill Mitchell (whuxj!wjm)