Three hundred years, remember, not twenty. Plus the challenge from the originals in Shostakovich and Prokofiev.
I hope so too. Have you browsed all the great Kraftwerk stuff on Youtube? Coolest. Band. Evah! Nobody has ever danced like Ralf and Florian.
I would say Bob Dylan and Simon&Garfunkel. Perhaps it’s wishful thinking on my part.
Another factor to consider is the sheer volume of material being produced now. When arguing about music produced originally in the early 1700s the number of professional composers then compared to material and music writers now is insignificant. In short, we’re produced hundreds of thousands (millions? I don’t know) of new compositions per year. It’ll be harder for even superior songs to stay in the limelight in 300 years than it was for those 1700 era pieces which had less to compete against.
The best argument FOR 20th century music to survive is that with the advent of global culture we find that there’s a slowing cultural evolution and a more sort of ‘steady state’ culture becomes the norm. Sort of like how television and broadcast is tending to control pronunciation and language while also allowing slang to spread quickly.
How many musicians from 1706 does anyone remember?
Composers – sure. And some popular composers might still be known in 300 years to a few specialists and academics. But if you mean current popular composers that are generally well know in the time, about the only sure choice is George Gershwin – and only for his classical works.
If composers can count, I’ll say Aaron Copland, Carl Orff, and Nie Er.
RealityChuck—If I may, they also didn’t have audio recording technology or massive international marketing campaigns in 1706. That’s liable to hinder the memory of individual musicians, somewhat.
I agree that people will still be listening to John Wililams, but not for that reason, necessarily. I am positive that people will still be watching the cinema of the 20th century in a few hundred years. It’s such a young medium, and many people watch very early films many decades later as it is. So those living in 2300 will hear Williams’ compositions while watching Star Wars, Indiana Jones et cetera–but they probably won’t listen to them outside the context of the films.
Then again, maybe there will be a “retro 19xxs” trend and all the cool kids will be listening to Led Zeppelin and Glenn Miller and Public Enemy! OK, maybe not, but stranger things have happened…
I thought we were talking about music that would still be listened to, not “relevance” or quality or any other designation. Williams may not be a particularly influential or original composer, and he may not be particularly inventive. Like it or not, he has been particularly fortunate to be attached to Spielberg, Lucas, et al., which means that quality aside, his music will live on for quite some time. Because the movies are likely to live on, the music will be listened to, in the same way that people will always listen to Paul Dukas’ “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” or Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” as long as they watch “Fantasia.”
Dukas probably won’t count — “Apprentice” came out in 1897. Mussorgsky? Definitely not a 20th-century guy.
Unless they’ve played Fallout. 
I’m pretty sure that one of the long-term effects of 20th-century mass media will be to continue to blur the line between composer, songwriter, writer, musician, etc.
Only the razor-slimmest sliver of the circa 2300 world audience will have any knowledge–much less appreciation–of 20th century music, especially when narrowed down to western musical forms spanning the chasm from pop to symphonic to rap to Broadway to jazz, rock, bluegrass, country, and more. At best, an elite minority will have a stereotypical awareness, but the real details will be lost to a shifting sea of more modern forms.
Among my nominations of female jazz vocalists: Billie Holliday, Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald.
I’m not so sure. The pace of musical evolution seems to be slowing dramatically with the advent or recording technology. How much has popular music really changed in the past 30-40 years?
The 20th century saw the birth of several musical styles- Jazz, country music, rock, bluegrass, and rap. I suspect that 300 years on these forms or some variant may still be around, and that the pioneers of the forms will still be remembered fondly (thanks to audio and video recordings which will allow future generations to hear and appreciate them).
Part of me really wants to see, in some future era, a highly popular retro
movement in terms of appreciating music from the past. I think starting in the 60’s
with everything that happened there that a lot of musical conventions were shattered
forever, bringing in a rather lengthy period of innovation the likes of which has
rarely been seen in the arts. Some might argue said period ended in 1970, or 1975,
or 1983, or 1994, or whatever (or still going), but I think there has been something
unique about the whole thing. For this entire fecund period then to be forgotten
300 years from now seems incomprehensible to me; I want to see this almost
pathological need by the masses to eat up the latest thing, and only the latest
thing, to sooner or later run its course.
But I also know what human nature is like too, so that does seem like a pipe dream.
Perhaps I, like many of you, am still too close to the whole thing to get some
perspective; maybe in 100 years the Beatles will seem as quaint as Scott Joplin
seems to us (recall even in the 30’s, the setting for the film The Sting. his
music was completely passe`). Maybe nobody will have rediscovered a criminally
neglected band like the Church, who will have been consigned to the
dustbin of history. But I have more faith in future human beings than that.
Such a ‘need’ is, in itself, a product of modern mass communication.
And you’re probably right about the Beatles - IMO, plenty of Beatles tracks do sound as cliched as Joplin standards.
I second the John Cash nomination.
In 2300, they’ll be a parenthetical clause in a footnote to musical history, but 225 years later, Zager and Evans will suddenly be ALL over the holodecks.
There’s one area where really, really old music continues to thrive. Religion.
Any Sunday morning, you can walk into churches all over the world and hear music composed by Martin Luther (died 1546). It’s a good bet that 300 years from now, there will be at least a couple of 20th Century compositions in the latest edition of The Lutheran Humnal or the Book of Common Prayer.
Unfortunately, all I can think of right now is a group of earnest young people sitting around the holofire singing “Kumbaya” and “Michael Row the Boat Ashore.”
I think the unique aspect is that you were alive at the time.
I seriously doubt that there will be such a thing as “recorded music” as we know it, in 200 years. Oh sure, there will be something that people will experience, but it won’t be experienced solely through their ears. Probably something that stimulates all the senses, or stimulates the brain directly, bypassing the senses entirely. And I think this will happen long before the year 2300, or even 2100.
But I sure hope the body of work that we will have left them will be appreciated by more than a handfull of historians and eccentrics.