Should we think of classical music as progressing with each new era?

Wow! This one of those HUGE questions, and one I have asked myself on numerous occasions. Like almost everything in life and history, only ONE little thing needs to have happened differently for the whole of everything to turn-out some other way. Had Monteverdi not forged and championed the new monophonic style we now know as the Baroque, or Beethoven not shaken-up the late Classical era in such a way that the circumstances were right for the Romantic period to evolve, who knows how things might have been different? With different pivotal composers replacing the Machauts, Dufays, Monteverdis, Bachs, Mozarts, Beethovens, Wagners, Schoenbergs and Stravinskys, music would have inevitably evolved differently, although it is impossible to surmise HOW different it would have been.

All arts evolve through time, yet all build their new foundations on those of the old (Monteverdi being something of an exception with his new style of composition). Even the most revolutionary of composers have the roots firmly in the traditions of the past (Beethoven with Haydn and Mozart, Wagner with Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Berlioz, Schoenberg with Wagner and Wagner and Stravinsky with Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky). So, to answer your question at last, YES, all new eras of music are natural progressions from those that went before.

In other genres of music, popular songs have been around from hundreds of years, be they 17th-century tavern songs, Victorian parlour ballads, swing, rock and roll and hip hop. Rock and roll evolved from jazz, which evolved from ragtime, which evolved from the Afro-American music that black people introduced to European musics. Very few things, musically speaking, are completely and unexpectedly new - most have arrived logically from somewhere else. It's still happening now - as I type - as you read!

This is an interesting question for history in general as well as music history. Histories of all kinds have an unexamined assumption that human history is the history of progress. This assumption influences the way history is framed, but it is overly simplistic. The 20th century was a time of great technological progress as well as some of the worst atrocities of all time (the Holocaust is just one example.) Western civilization declined after the Roman Empire fell, while the Moors maintained some scientific knowledge that would otherwise have been lost. Throughout history, there have been gains and losses in different places at different times.

This applies to music as well. I don't think the music of the Baroque era is less sophisticated than the music of the Romantic period, or that Rossini is a better composer than Mozart, or that minimalist music represents the peak of musical achievement.

Certainly new developments in music grow out of what comes before. Sometimes they are reactions against something that was popular in the past. There can be a pendulum effect between different extremes - between rationality and orderly forms and rhapsodic, idiosyncratic emotionality for example. It is really interesting to study how music is affected by other cultural forces of its time. Romantic music was influenced by an increasing philosophical emphasis on the individual as opposed to the community. Expressionist music reflects the breakdown of social order and new ideas about the subconscious that come from Freud. Those are just a couple of examples.

I think it's fascinating to examine music in its historical context. A better set of tools for understanding history could lead to more interesting conversations.

It's fun to wonder "what if" as well. Certainly small changes might have had different results. Had the church in England not objected to opera during Lent, opera in English might be more common today. Had Martin Luther not nailed those theses on the church door, would the music of Bach have been different? What if Debussy had not attended the International Exhibition where he heard Eastern musics for the first time?

Good question.

well i myself like music from each era except this really new music these past phew years.

kids are def being brainwashed with this lady gaga type music i mean people know it sucks and yet it still remains number 1 go figure.

kids usally grow up with the music thats usally playing at there time in life.

most kids dont even bother listening too the older music because people will think that was so yesterday and uncool. you know what i mean

To echo this category's most revered, most knowledgeable "del_icio..".......WOW !!! : a topic certainly worthy to be that of a Ph.D thesis.

And your employing the phrase "inevitable" in this instance, brings to mind Leonard Bernstein in his famous TV educational series, referencing what follows what, in Beethoven's compositions as inevitable; but as "del_icio.." has remarked, it's not applicable here.

I personally view the progression of CM as not necessarily PROGRESS in the literal sense of the word; but rather a spiraling evolution - keeping in mind what goes up, also comes down. So that the current and recent evolution of it is not necessarily to be looked upon as possessing the worth/quality of that of the past.

That we are ever to see the likes of another Beethoven(or even more astounding were it come to pass, another J.S. Bach), remains to be seen. My criteria always with assessing the quality of any art form, is if it endures: if it doesn't - endure - it doesn't qualify.

Alberich

Bartók Béla's view on the matter was "Evolution; not revolution."