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They are all synchronically “present” in a more or less “spatial” sense. In other words, the sense of “history” as a cumulative, linear, progressive movement through time has been seriously undermined. Presently, time is often viewed spatially, as if our “present” were a synchronous environment, as if we exist within a constellation of ideas and phenomena that envelop our selves and all of our activities. The situation of art and music is viewed in such a manner that virtually any present or historical device, form, technique, structural premise, medium, or conception is equally available to anyone who wishes to incorporate any, all, or none of them, wholly or partially, into his/her works.
This “spatial,” synchronic sense of the “present” is very important. The already-mentioned book by Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge,6 an early, seminal articulation of postmodern thought, delineated one of the principal characteristics of postmodernity in the following terms: “The grand narrative [paradigm] has lost its credibility.”7 Postmodernism signals for Lyotard the end of confidence in large hierarchical systems possessing the organizational force of any of the scientific, social, political, or aesthetic systems that have been the principal forces of change in the past—that is, tonality, representationalism, foundational philosophy, and supposedly ultimate, “given,” scientific laws. Again, it does not matter whether Lyotard was always “right.” The point is that his thinking has had an enormous and compelling impact on perceptions of people living today.8
One of the more interesting phenomena affected by this view is, as we just mentioned, that of science. Later, we look at science as the principal form of paradigmatic thought in the realm of “knowledge.” We then compare recent conceptions of scientific development with developments in the arts.
An E-Mail
The import of the proposal that we perform equally the music of the living and the dead is lost on one music theorist. In an e-mail, this person addressed the wrong argument: that the music of the Western classical tradition is dead.