There is so much to learn from the graphic (hand drawn on graph paper) map called "Who Invented the Avant Garde" by Ward Shelley. If you click a couple of times on the image on his website it will be enlarged so that you can read and follow everything on it. You may need to wait for a while for the whole thing to load, but it's well worth the wait.
Unfortunately Shelley seems to have circumvented what we call "classical music" in his work, so I have to fill in the blanks.
I'm off to spend time exploring more of Shelley's work!
2 comments:
What a wonderful find--you are right, loaded with interesting information, well worth the little wait for it to load. Only wish I could hang the whole thing on my wall and study it. And yes, as classical music is missing from the map, I eagerly await learning how you choose to fill in the blanks.
How I wish I could truly map out the arm of the avant garde in music, but it occurs to me that "classical" music has a much more blob-like progression through history, particularly since as a part of the general culture, with a few exceptions, it hasn't left the kind of record for the non-musician and non-music-reader as other forms of expression. Once we had recorded music and non-practitioners could consider the musical record (as it were) as an object to consider away from our own subjective playing of it (which is always mingled with the here and now), we could more easily evaluate its contribution to culture as a whole.
Shelley seems to deal primarily with visual art, philosophy, and history.
My hope is that someone with tremendous artistic talent who knows a great deal about music and history (as well as philosophy and art) will try to tackle the same kind of map. I wish I were that person, but I sorely lack what would be required.
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