You might have had this discussion with a number of friends – if you could transport yourself to a different era, which would you choose? Which would you avoid? It’s all a game, but good party conversation.

I’m drawn to the explosion of musical achievement in the mid-to-late 19th century – the blossoming of German opera, the evolution of the tone poem. I’d stay away from the Enlightenment. And then there’s the 1910’s, leading up to the outbreak of World War I. I wish I could watch the events of that decade from a safe spot – sort of like watching a shark’s feeding frenzy from a steel cage. It’s completely fascinating, and equally scary.

The world had become modern and much more complex. Romantic sensibilities were shunned. The individual as a hero with a purpose was traded for the absurdity of existence in an human insect-hive. Would any of the “old ways” be relevant in the 20th century?

In the same way that militaries were rushing to be technologically one-step ahead of their enemies, artists were pushing boundaries to the extreme. The term avant-garde means just this – the “advance soldiers” who are doing the riskiest work, but with the greatest promise of reward (if they are successful).

The Austrian musical military was the Second Viennese School, who had created a new musical technology which was years ahead of France and Italy (and decades ahead of England, Russia, and the US). To oversimplify, the old tried-and-true approach to tonality was abandoned, and a new system of organization put into place. If you’ve never heard atonal music before, you might find it difficult to listen to – but if you are able to approach it with an open mind, you might find it quite beautiful, but in very different ways from tonal music. (side note – today’s piece is pretty tame as far as atonality goes …)

Alban Berg (arguably the best composer of the Second Viennese School, though not as famous its founder, Arnold Schoenberg) wrote a set of songs for orchestra and voice in 1911 (the same year as the Rite of Spring). When they were premiered, the audience began to riot – but this was fairly normal for this decade (again, see the Rite.) I would love to have been there – but inside inside a steel cage with bullet-proof glass, of course.

Mention the name John Cage, and you’ll get a smirk out of every former music appreciation student.

“John Cage? Oh yeah, I like his music. I especially like his 4’33”, heh heh.”

Even if Cage’s music isn’t exactly the kind of stuff you turn on to relax at the end of a difficult day, he does make you think. Another of his famous philosophy-based compositions is “Music of Changes“. There is an ancient Chinese divination book, the I Ching, in which you toss three coins six times to determine your fortune. (you can use the I Ching online!) Cage took this idea and translated it into a compositional device. So instead of thinking, “I think this piece needs a quarter-note G here,” Cage used the I Ching to tell him what notes to put where – in a manner of speaking, removing the composer from the compositional process, and leaving every choice to a coin toss.

This idea of reducing the control of the composer is known as Indeterminacy, and was a reaction to a style called Serialism, in which the composer carefully organized everything with inflexible mathematical structures. The irony is that both the random Indeterminate music and the ultra-organized Serialist music both sounded the same – inhuman, confusing, and difficult.

So, what happens when a composer says “Let It Go!” and writes music based on chance alone? Listen:

I recently saw online that you can once again purchase and play the original 1996 PC game Quake. While it wasn’t the first first-person-shooter, it was the first one that had a truly 3D world and allowed for multiplayer games. I wasted many hours playing this masterpiece with my college buddies (I regret nothing). What struck me about this 20-year anniversary sale was that the game was getting negative reviews. Well, the game is ancient as far as computers go, and the graphics looks abysmal compared to modern shooters. But still, the guts of the game hadn’t changed – so why the poor reception?

It was the music! The original game had a soundtrack by the metal band Nine Inch Nails. They scrapped this music in the currently sold version, probably because the band wanted a cut of the profits, and it would be hard to justify selling this ancient game for more than a few bucks – not enough to pay the piper. Quake was a good game, but they’re right, it’s a completely different experience without the death metal soundtrack. The same thinking applies to movies. If we were to remove the music from movies, they would feel empty. Try to imagine Star Wars without the heroic theme. Or Chariots of Fire without the iconic running music. Or Rocky without “Gonna Fly Now.” Now try to imagine them with different music …

Does it work conversely? Could the music stand alone without the film? Sometimes yes, sometimes no, I suppose. I have to be honest and say I’ve never seen the movie On the Waterfront, but I know the Symphonic Suite from it that Bernstein wrote, and I feel like I can tell the flavor of the movie, based on the music alone.