(“Colori” Giuseppe Chiari - 1974)
Is any music possible at any time?
Or does the era determine the type(s) of music that are possible?
Of course, there is the question of the instruments available at that time.
There is also the determination of the places and social circumstances where music is composed and performed.
But I also wonder whether the “spirit of the times,” the political context, the dominant intellectual paradigms, social conflicts, and new advances in science and cosmology may have had an influence on the music that was conceivable, listenable, in short, possible at a given time and place.
In other words, did Copernicus or Newton have an impact on the music of their time? Did Einstein's theory of relativity, the atom, cybernetics, and quantum physics influence musical creation?
And what about the humanities? Did the Encyclopedism of the Enlightenment, German altertumwissenschatf, Freudian psychoanalysis, structural linguistics, semiotics, and surrealism find their way into the history of music?
In other words, are we free of the parameters of our musical creation today, or are we unknowingly determined by the dominant paradigms of our time?
