The biggest difference between classical composers and pop musicians is that the former were reliant on others performing their works to keep their fame, whereas pop musicians make recordings that will last indefinitely.
In 200 years, pretty much every recording we have now will still exists, and I expect will be trivial to listen to whatever you want. It would be a better comparison to ask who’s songs or music would still be performed. Obvious answers would be jazz standards and the Great American Songbook type stuff, as well as Bob Dylan.
My wife is a music historian and we discussed this for fun last night. We came up with The Beatles and Louis Armstrong. Armstrong because people will remember that jazz was a thing, and if you’re going to remember one jazz musician, Armstrong is it. The Beatles are The One for rock.
One problem for the endurance of art music composers is that their memory hinges on the survival of the orchestra as an institution. Orchestras could very well vanish in the next 100 years. They’re patronage-driven and depend on a complicated training program to produce new players. If society moves away from using classical music as a status marker and patronage goes away, the whole system will collapse pretty rapidly. Orchestras are ephemeral hot-house flowers. They’re the product of a very specific constellation of economic and cultural forces, and once those forces changes then they’re unlikely to survive. If we’re looking at music that’s likely to endure in the long run, a composition like “Yesterday” has legs in a way that a symphony doesn’t.
To be honest I was kinda all over the place in my original post. I know the thread is about musicians, my point was more about artists/authors in general rather than only musicians. Many former Nobel Prize winners in literature are almost forgotten today. I suppose you are correct about the musical side of the issue. Musicians are perhaps at less risk of changing fashions and trends.
You have a point but I’m not sure that orchestras are going to disappear.
The number of orchestras will probably shrink significantly but the best will still be there. Classical music is a cornerstone of our culture, and now it’s pretty much a worlwide phenomenon (witness all the great artsts from South America and more tellingly, Eastern Asia). People have predicted the end of Western Classical music for decades. Instead of disappearing, it is spreading. Other cultures are adopting it and making it their own, along with their traditional forms of Art music. I’m sure there will be people who are determined and have the means to save that heritage.
As much as I love Yesterday, losing this song would be far less devastating to our civilization than losing all our orchestral masterpieces.
Prince’s music is already being forgotten. I wouldn’t give him 50 years.
I agree with the Beatles and Louis Armstrong as being the strongest candidates. I also wouldn’t be surprised if We are the champions is still being played at sporting events and graduations a long time from now.
I disagree with everyone who said the Beatles. They are entirely too pop and contain none of the edge edge of groups like The Who, Sabbath, or The Stones and none of the soul of Stevie Wonder, Sam Cooke or Marvin Gaye.
For long-term survivability I think you have to look to the movies and the great theme tunes. Think of John Williams with Star Wars and Indiana Jones and Jaws. Or Bernstein with The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape.
The market was significantly different during the early modern period, though. Only the composer and performers had any financial interest in music and very little power to distribute and advertise their music, beyond the music itself. The music industry didn’t exist yet, picking up stupid, good looking teens, and advertising them directly to other teens as fashion icons. I’m pretty confident that, that distorts the market away from the quality of the songs themselves.
And if you look at most people who are past the teen/college age, they largely listen to the music that they listened to when they were young. They don’t go back and find the bands from their era who were actually talented; those who weren’t good looking enough, weren’t willing to twerk while singing, or were too edgy to sell to the mass market. Those artists are all just lost to time.
It’s possible that the record industry produced artists will continue to be popular through time, as emblems of the music, style, and dances of their era. But if we assume that the people of the future don’t care about how sexy Howlin’ Wolf was compared to Elvis, just how good they are as musicians and composers, then we can expect that Elvis will fade into obscurity and better Blues musicians will rise in prominence.
I agree with this. As matter of fact, I’ve sometimes reflected that with a significant number of composers taking the total serialist dead-end street (not all of them, mind you), the closest popular, more or less tonal equivalent of classical music is film music. I hasten to add that I have very little knowledge of film music but from what I hear in movies, it seems to take many cues from Wagner, Debussy or Stravinsky. John Williams for instance has written many classical works along his movie themes (and good ones, too).
So, yes: I could see a future of classical music where film music and non-serialist classical music are what is remembered of the 20th century.
Yes, I’ve often noticed that people who listen to bubblegum pop music in their teens still listen to bubblegum pop when get they turn 40 or 50. Whereas those who were into “alternative” or more demanding stuff tend go on listening to complex stuff when they grow up. Even if their tastes change, they remain demanding.
Personally, I was into metal and early gothic in my teens, jazz in my twenties and I’ve gone back to classical and contemporary since I turned 30 (i.e. what my parents listened when I was a kid minus contemporary works which they hated).
Their songwriting has plenty of interest, both musically and academically, that I can’t see their work disappearing in 100 or 200 years. I mean, there’s already university courses dedicated to them, musicologists like Alan W. Pollack have found their music interesting enough to dissect in the most minute detail academically, etc. Add to that their enormous influence to the bands, songwriting, recording techniques, etc., of the 20th and 21st century, that I can’t see how they could possibly be forgotten. They’re a given. It isn’t even a question for me whether they’ll be remembered 200 years from now.
I was thinking of mentioning Sondheim. His work will undoubtedly be *studied *in the future, but mass appeal is another thing. Plus, to really appreciate a musical, you need a live performance, and that can get pricey.
I know it’s not what the OP meant to ask or wants to hear, but I agree with those who say that neither the Beatles nor any other pop/rock group will be heard much in the future, except by those with very esoteric tastes. Great though the Beatles may be, their work just isn’t complex enough to still be studied hundreds of years from now. I agree that a likelier candidate is someone working in a “classical” form - perhaps a film composer.
I think jazz may also have a better chance of being revered.
As a music guy and a trivia guy, I have been exposed to the world of Beatles Obsessives. They are large in number and capacious in their appetite for detail. Sitting in on a lecture where someone broke down the tape loops used on Tomorrow Never Knows was a revelation - several hundred people in the crowd, with a lot of kids who were NOT just there to go with Mom and Dad.
Will that still happen 200 years from now? Yes - there will be Beatles tribute bands. They will play exact renditions of the songs, somewhat ossified, just like the overly-practiced and perfect renditions of the great improvisers like Chopin and Lizst are in classical circles. So it goes.
Too bad we’ll never know! I just think it’s doubtful. The '60s and everything it represents still looms so large over our consciousness nowadays, but they’ll be boring, dusty history to people two centuries from now. Popular music taste and fashions will have moved so far that the Beatles and other pop acts will be about as interesting to listeners as Gregorian chants. I’m not saying they’ll be forgotten, I just think they’ll be way outside the mainstream.
I am thinking of the Beatles Tribute bands playing in kinda the same way that we look at presentations of older music today. So yeah, not mainstream, per se, but still around and appreciated and part of the overall conversation on music.
Well, I don’t know. I think with technology and the ability to digitally preserve the actual original recordings, visuals, etc., and the ability to spread it worldwide there will be greater “continuity of culture” that we’ve seen before in history, so I actually expect the Beatles to be remain relatively mainstream. I’m not talking Top 40, or anything like that, but well known, if not in everyday rotation. I mean, we’re over 50 years on from the Beatles first album already, and it’s showing no signs of being forgotten, and I suspect more people have heard the Beatles now than at any other point in history.
