Music Criticism (Innovation)

= Music Criticism (Innovation) =

In recent years, not only in music but in art in general, it has become possible for people without formal training to create works, unlike before.
As a result, the world is flooded with a vast number of works.
Among these works, there are some that are innovative and groundbreaking.

That raises a question I keep coming back to: where's the line between "innovative" and "just bad"?

For example, there may be novel instrumentation.
This can be seen as innovative, or it can be seen as a sign of a lack of formal training.
If that person did not have formal training, would that innovation automatically turn the work into a bad one?
While that possibility exists, it also depends heavily on the artist and the context, and could be seen as missing the point of looking at the work itself.

This gets even more complicated in an era where a single plugin and a handful of preset algorithms can generate something that sounds "novel" with almost no effort.
If anyone can produce unconventional sounds at the push of a button, what kind of innovation actually deserves praise?
What do you think? Please share your opinions freely!

Edited Monday at 11:13 AM4 days by Lithl

I don’t think innovation has to go hand in hand with formal training.

I do think that any kind of training is beneficial.

What I find challenging at the moment is the very act of innovating.

And that’s not a bad thing. There’s enough material and musical languages out there to do millions of things.

Throughout the 20th century, I believe there have indeed been many movements and composers who have explored, innovated and pushed boundaries, many of whom have left behind their own musical languages.

Ives + Cowell, Schoenberg, Bartók, Messiaen, Cage, Ligeti, … right up to Pärt and Rautavaara. Minimalism…

But since the latter part of the 20th century, I don’t think there has been any significant innovation.

Perhaps in this day and age, innovation will have to come hand in hand with new technologies and sciences:

Symbiosis with artificial intelligence: perhaps the composer could train a musical language model using their own works to generate variations with which to engage in real-time dialogue.

The creation of mutable works (soundtracks, etc.) that never sound the same twice, adapting to factors relating to the listener.

Perhaps some kind of microtonal system might re-emerge in the future?

Why does Humanity use CARS ?...........................Why don't they use their LEGS ?

On 8/17/2026 at 7:16 AM, Luis Hernández said:

But since the latter part of the 20th century, I don’t think there has been any significant innovation.

Which also raises the question: does the very idea of "musical innovation" have real significance in a world defined a pluralism of musical styles and languages? Many narratives of musical innovation imply not only a linear and one-sided view of history, but also that technique is somehow autonomous from the composers who utilized them. But especially with the rise of AI-generated content, I think it's the human element that remains most important. I tend to think that questions of technical innovation are secondary to the fact that music is essentially a form of communication and dialogue between PERSONS. That's where its real power lies--not as the craft of constructing progressively more advanced sonic artifacts.

Edited Wednesday at 04:05 PM2 days by CrystalCanon

That’s true.

Although I’m not sure what implications there are in music being a form of communication. I believe that music is, if anything, a metaphorical language. But the meaning of what it might convey is highly subjective.

I certainly don’t believe that innovation has to come through new sounds or things like that. The expansion of the expressive techniques of many instruments has already been fully explored.

I was referring more to innovation in terms of style, defined as the set of visual, technical and formal features that characterise a work, an artist or an entire artistic movement.

And it is far more difficult to create a new language. As such, I believe there have been very few: modal music centred on a single note, tonal music centred on the triad, and, shall we say, the liberation from that centre in its many expressions.

But who knows.

Talk of "innovation" is a moot point when we are inundated with music that isn't even "good" to begin with. If something is new, but it sucks, then it doesn't matter how different it is. So the conversation is kind of cart before horse.

People mistakenly assume, in a world right now of endless remakes, re-releases, etc. that the problem is a lack of "new ideas".

The reality is that we, as a society, are not presently able to replicate what made the the old things great in the first place.

And if we can't do that, then no "innovative" idea is going to be worth a damn.

34 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

Talk of "innovation" is a moot point when we are inundated with music that isn't even "good" to begin with. If something is new, but it sucks, then it doesn't matter how different it is. So the conversation is kind of cart before horse.

Fair point.

37 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

People mistakenly assume, in a world right now of endless remakes, re-releases, etc. that the problem is a lack of "new ideas".

The reality is that we, as a society, are not presently able to replicate what made the old things great in the first place.

I agree with this (without nostalgia, of course). It seems that because people are being exposed to so many musical languages today, there can be an underlying sentiment that "all music is equal". Or else the classical canon is treated as something sacred and inviolable, and its composers above all criticism. Either approach bypasses the hard and necessary work of actually understanding WHAT makes these pieces work, on a level deeper than that of surface rule-following (since rules evolve and change, but the principles behind music don't). Quoting Boulez here: "In order truly to harness the power of the classics, you have to dig deeper, reach down to what made them behave in a particular way, to understand and to analyze their approach. It is not enough to observe the results and to dispossess them (quotation, stylistic imitation, etc.); creativity does not have sufficiently powerful thematicism at its disposal, but becomes spent, though referencing and distorting, no longer able to forge material only for itself."