Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Singles

In this Saeculum we've gone from single pop songs in the 50s, to huge rock operas taking 4 vinyl sides, then back around to single digital tunes. Maybe the 4T is just too much to keep track of bigger chunks of music.

Hmm... "Fanfare for the Common Man," which is pretty close to a "single" in classical music (right down to its 3-minute length) was composed by Copland in 1942, in the middle of the war.

Then again, maybe it's that the 2T is the only time with ideas big enough to support that much unified and organized music. Was the Ring cycle done during the Progressive era? I think it might have been. If so, we can expect that singles will be the way music is consumed for another 40 years, at which time someone will figure out a way to package digital music into a form that requires an hour of steady listening.

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