Autonomous Transformation

CHAPTER 5Requiem for the Industrial Revolution: Rehumanizing Work

In the world of classical music, epochs have built upon the work of one another. Melodies, progressions, rhythms, instruments, vocal and instrumental pedagogy—they have evolved and been passed down from generation to generation through written, performed, and, more recently, recorded tradition. Arguably, the epoch of classical music that has left the most far‐reaching impression on the way we experience music is the Romantic era, in which performers first began to interpret music through their own emotional connection to the notes and melodies, accelerating or decelerating as best fit their interpretation.

This paradigm shift is so embedded in the way humans experience music in the post‐Romantic era that musicians from all over the world have recast music from epochs that predate the Romantic era, such as the Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical eras, through the Romantic lens of interpretation. Musical purists find this phenomenon frustrating, because they would prefer to hear Baroque music, for example, as it was intended and would have been played at that time, following a consistent tempo, celebrating precision, with no concept of speeding up or slowing down individual passages.

Another example of the Romantic era's impact on society and even our mental constructs regarding art and music is the elevation of the artist. Before the Romantic era, being a classical composer in Europe was a trade, having evolved ...