The truth is no stock goes straight up in a straight arrow. Wall Street types think it is healthy to “consolidate gains” and to discard the “weak hands.”

I was thinking about this in the context of 20th century music history. There was always so much concern for progress and advancement. No time was every taken for “consolidating” ideas and forming the basis of a new direction in the discipline. As a result, ideas were instead generated and discarded very rapidly. Atonal music, serialism, and minimalism have all lasted a historical blip in time. Contrast this with the slow process of change from Bach to Haydn to Mozart to Beethoven to Wagner. What once took hundreds of years now takes a decade, if that.

Is today’s music more accessible? More tonal? Are we in a state of consolidating gains?

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