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Guess who said the two things below? (Yes, you can Google them but don't spoil the fun.)
"perhaps some will wonder at my undertaking to write about music...at a time
when music has become almost an arbitrary matter, and composers will no longer
be bound by laws and rules, but avoid the names of school and law as they would death itself . . ."
"I will not be deterred by the most passionate haters of study, nor by
the depravity of the present time."
This sounds like a common criticism of the music of the Twentieth Century from the traditionalists both inside and outside the church. And clearly, there was a lot of rule breaking during that century, accompanied by a shift in authority shifted from the composer to the performer. And no doubt, there was a lot of depravity too.
But these quotes do not come from the Twentieth Century. They go all the way back to a man named Johann Fux, a traditionalist during the late Baroque era (early 1700s). Fux was an admirer of Palestrina, who composed during the 1500s, and he apparently thought that modern music was lawless and rogue. I do not know who he was referring to for sure, but Bach was prominent at the time and the Baroque era was giving way to the Classical era (Mozart was about to be born).
It is amusing to me that the music that traditionalists today consider ideal (Baroque) was itself under attack from the traditionalists of its own day. This trend has existed through the history of music. Traditionalists have a history of rejecting innovation. But eventually, the music they reject becomes the "new" traditional music.
This is why I have said many times that if we as traditionalists are going to reject music, we need to have a solid reason for it. The attitude that music cannot be good because it is not what I am used to or does not follow my rules stifles healthy innovation. And our music is better off because the traditionalists lost those battles centuries ago.
But that is not to say that traditionalists are fools. For example, Johann Fux's writing is still used in universities today, and Bach was a traditionalist who was no slouch. (He was considered old fashioned by his peers toward the end of his life.)
These are complicated issues. I wish I had this figured out but I don't. We probably need a balance of both traditionalists and progressives.
