In Memoriam: Robert K. Hoffman

I read in the paper today that the found­ing edi­tor of the National Lam­poon, one of my favorite mag­a­zines from way back when, has just passed away. In his New York Times obit­u­ary, we learn that after he made his money in pub­lish­ing, he became a col­lec­tor of fine art. In fact, he called art “the only effec­tive method to travel and con­nect across time and space.”

What an inter­est­ing con­cept! But isn’t it true? Don’t we con­nect to Mozart’s age by hear­ing one of his sym­phonies? Don’t we get a sense of the con­fu­sion and dis­ar­ray of early 20^th Cen­tury Europe by hear­ing a Schoen­berg string quar­tet? And what about negro spir­i­tu­als? How about the jazz age music of Cole Porter?

And I won­der: How is the music we com­pose today reflec­tive of our “time and space”? Is clas­si­cal music ade­quate? Or must we look to pop­u­lar music as being more representative?

In 100 years, what music will be lis­tened to to reflect the “time and space” of the early 2000s?