Music Book Review: The Music of the Future by Robert Barry

The Music of the Future
by Robert Barry (Music 780.9 Bar)

We have lots of music history books in Polley, but Robert Barry takes a particularly fresh approach to music history in his The Music of the Future. Despite what the book’s title might suggest, most of the “futures” being explored here aren’t speculations on where music might go from the present, but instead the focus is on historical conceptions of “the future,” how those ideas reflected their own eras, and how musical development met or fell short of those conceptions.

 

In his “Prelude” (the book is divided into three “Acts” with intervals, Prelude and Coda), Barry immediately suggests that most of his historical survey inevitably documents falling short of futuristic conceptions: “What I want to present is something more like a history of failures — failures to meet the impossible challenge of the music of the future, to summon up a whole world in a verse or a song. But this succession of failures nonetheless left their marks on the way we continue to think and feel about music.”

 

His “First Act” illustrates probably the most literal failed futuristic movement in music and the arts more generally: the Italian Futurists of the 1910s and 20s. Though they produced some fascinating manifestos toward new forms of art that could incorporate the sounds and sights of then-modern city life (and you can read those in The Art of Noise here in the Polley Music Library), their work was quickly forgotten as they became more interested in fascist politics than art. Their musical ideas were re-discovered decades later by composers like John Cage, who by then were able to use them toward new approaches to art.

 

You’ll find many more fascinating examples of creativity in various stages of failure and unexpected rebirth throughout The Music of the Future, including evaluations of modern technology and how it might reveal fortuitous directions in music and the arts. While our guesses about the future may often be slightly off the mark, the very notion that we’re anticipating the future at all seems to be an important part of the creative impulse itself.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try The Art of Noise by Ferruchio Busoni, or Music: A Subversive History by Ted Gioia.]

[ publisher’s official The Music of the Future web page ]

 

Recommended by Scott S.
Polley Music Library

 

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Check out this, and all the other great music resources, at the Polley Music Library, located on the 2nd floor of the Bennett Martin Public Library at 14th & "N" St. in downtown Lincoln. You'll find biographies of musicians, books about music history, instructional books, sheet music, CDs, music-related magazines, and much more. Also check out Polley Music Library Picks, the Polley Music Library's e-mail newsletter, and follow them on Facebook!