# What "contemporary Music will be known, studied and enjoyed 200 years from now. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 19, 2014, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-contemporary-music-will-be-known-studied-and-enjoyed-200-years-from-now/684097 "2014-03-19T17:44:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Steophan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steophan/32/9595_2.png) [@Steophan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steophan)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-contemporary-music-will-be-known-studied-and-enjoyed-200-years-from-now/684097/21 "2014-03-24T17:05:41Z")
Uh, you realise that we’re talking about music, and that hundreds of composers from 200 or more years ago are regularly listened to and studied, not to mention thousands of anonymous folk songs and tunes from back then? There’s a reason we don’t read many novels from that long ago, it’s because the novel was hardly a thing then. A better comparison would be poetry - Coleridge, Lord Byron, Shelley and several others from 200 years ago are household names, and many others from earlier are almost as well known. I think it’s a given that a strong preference for centuries old art will be a niche thing, as it is now, but I doubt it’ll be _less_ common. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2014, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-contemporary-music-will-be-known-studied-and-enjoyed-200-years-from-now/684097/22 "2014-03-25T12:07:32Z")
I would not be at all surprised if something like _Baby Got Back_ by Sir Mix A Lot ends up somehow still being around 200 years from now, not least because there will doubtless still be a significant number of people who do indeed find generously proportioned buttocks pleasing and be unable to make a statement to the contrary on the grounds it would be untruthful.\* 😛 It’s also quite possible that the music from now people in the early 2200s are listening to could be some incredibly obscure indie/garage band that’s just not to many people’s taste now but strikes a chord with people 200 years hence for some reason. What I do think is possible is that some of the classic movie music (the _James Bond_ theme, the Raiders March from the _Indiana Jones_ films and the Imperial March from _Star Wars_) will still be around but they’ll have lost their connection to the films they came from, at least for the average punter. If you consider the 1812 Overture (written in 1880 and not 1812, incidentally), for example, pretty much everyone knows it as “That classical music with the cannon fire at the end”. I doubt many people who weren’t music aficionados, historians, or SDMB members could tell you (without looking it up on Wikipedia) the piece was written to celebrate the Russian defeat of Napoleon and tells a story. I’d suspect something similar will happen with the iconic film music - people will know the tune and associate it with espionage, adventure or galactic badassery as appropriate, but that will be where their knowledge of the piece ends unless they’re really into music and/or history. \*Also, there was a joke about it being considered “Classical Music” in the _Futurama_ universe, set in the 3000s 😉 ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2014, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-contemporary-music-will-be-known-studied-and-enjoyed-200-years-from-now/684097/23 "2014-03-25T12:12:52Z")
Could a moderator fix the thread title, adding the prefix, “Other than SteelyDan,”? Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2014, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-contemporary-music-will-be-known-studied-and-enjoyed-200-years-from-now/684097/24 "2014-03-25T13:51:50Z")
> [@Bellhorn](#): > > I’d like to think that Dave Brubeck’s _Take Five_ album is still studiied, with it’s unique time signatures, including 5/4 and 9/8, which are due, in large part, to Brubeck’s study of African music. I would hope so, too, and I really can’t see that disappearing in 200 years. I think there will be more continuity of culture in many ways, given that it can so easily be preserved and shared with digital and telecommunication technologies. (And, I believe he got some of the time signature ideas from Balkan music, which uses irregular meters fairly commonly. The Balkans, Turkey, Hungary, etc., that general area of Southeastern Europe it’s not unusual to find time signatures like that. 5/4 and 9/8 also appear occasionally in the rest of Europe, but not quite as commonly, especially given Brubeck’s 2+2+2+3/8 division of the 9/8. 3+3+3/8, though, is not all _that_ unusual, see, for example, _Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring_.) ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2014, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-contemporary-music-will-be-known-studied-and-enjoyed-200-years-from-now/684097/25 "2014-03-25T13:56:46Z")
Actually, it looks like the rhythmic inspiration was during a visit to Turkey, while listening to a Turkish folk song in “Bulgarian meter” (9/8). The 2+2+2+3 subdivision of 9/8 that Brubeck uses in Rondo a la Turk does show up in Bulgarian folk music quite a lot. > [@](#): > > The inspiration for this style of music came during a U.S. State Department-sponsored tour of Eurasia. In Turkey, Brubeck observed a group of street musicians performing a traditional Turkish folk song with supposedly Bulgarian influence that was played in 9/8 time, a rare meter for Western music (traditionally called “Bulgarian meter”). After learning about the form from native symphony musicians, Brubeck was inspired to create an album that deviated from the usual 4/4 time of jazz and experimented in the more exotic styles he experienced abroad.[6] ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2014, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-contemporary-music-will-be-known-studied-and-enjoyed-200-years-from-now/684097/26 "2014-03-26T03:29:35Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > Think of it as similar to literature. We have books from 200 years ago. Who can name an author from 1814? The vast, vast majority of people couldn’t name one from 1914, much less an extra hundred years back. Or 2014, for that matter. And as for Shakespeare, how many future Chinese people will be familiar with his work? ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2014, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-contemporary-music-will-be-known-studied-and-enjoyed-200-years-from-now/684097/27 "2014-03-26T03:56:48Z")
Alive in the 20th century: Camille Saint-Saëns Gabriel Fauré John Philip Sousa Edward Elgar Gustav Mahler Claude Debussy Richard Strauss Jean Sibelius Scott Joplin Ralph Vaughan Williams Sergei Rachmaninoff Gustav Holst Maurice Ravel Béla Bartók Percy Grainger Igor Stravinsky Sergei Prokofiev Carl Orff (because people will never stop using Carmina Burana for movie scores…) George Gershwin Born in the 20th century: Aaron Copland Dmitri Shostakovich Samuel Barber Alfred Mendelssohn Benjamin Britten Probably more… ---
**Author:** ![Jeff\_Lichtman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeff_lichtman/32/1531_2.png) [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2014, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-contemporary-music-will-be-known-studied-and-enjoyed-200-years-from-now/684097/28 "2014-03-26T07:41:42Z")
No love for Duke Ellington? He was a giant in the field of jazz, and I believe his work is more likely to be remembered 200 years from now than Brubeck’s. I think Brubeck himself would have said the same thing. Other important jazz figures who may be remembered two centuries from now include Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-contemporary-music-will-be-known-studied-and-enjoyed-200-years-from-now/684097.md?page=1)