This week, I’ve been playing around with ideas of modernity. This is partly inspired by Arjun Appadurai, who’s seminal text Modernity at Large I’ve been studying for my PhD. In it, Appadurai argues that modernity is not a simple transition but an in-flux set of scapes that influence modernity. For example, rather than a country moving from “not modern” to “modern”, what really happens is that said country is influenced in a variety of domains like media, technology, and finance which cause modern processes to interact with tradition. Furthermore, these traditions can then also influence these domains, leading to a symbiotic relationship. It was a fascinating read and one that is especially relevant to what I’ve been learning.

I’ve been thinking about this concept, specifically the technoscape, in the context of music. Most music in countries like Australia or the USA nowadays exists through a complex dynamic with the technoscape. Technology is responsible for our recording equipment, live performance equipment, practice tools (such as iPads for sheet music), and composition tools. Furthermore, the rise of digital instruments, called virtual studio technologies, has also led to music being dominated by the technoscape: these digital instruments are present in almost every film or television show nowadays and yet it is very unlikely you would have noticed their present, such is the quality of their sound and the expertise of the composers and sound designers using them.

I also think that musics which engage more strongly with the technoscape are more likely to be successful. I’ll show this first with a contrapositive example: musics which don’t engage with the technoscape are less likely to be successful. Western Art Music, such as classical and its ilk, has struggled to have any sense of identity in the modern age. Radio became dominated by popular musics, as did the first wave of digital storefronts. While classical music is on streaming services, the experience is often sub-par, leading Apple to make its own separate Apple Music Classical app, which is a better experience at the cost of separating classical music from the main app, reducing the number of people exposed to it. Classical music doesn’t fit into the world of YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, and TikToks. It is incredibly long-form, any vocals are usually in an unfamiliar language to English speakers, and there’s a set of rules that you learn in University music theory and otherwise you’ll probably never come across them. The analog is important to classical musicians; performances are dictated rarely by the skill of the performers as the skill gap between them is so small, and instead determined by what each performance has. This performance has period instruments, while that performance does not. When Star Wars Episode VII released, there was a lot of discussion about John William’s use of a freelance orchestra instead of the London Symphony, which had recorded every other Star Wars soundtrack. Did you notice a difference in the cinema?

Compare classical music with popular music, which does engage with the technoscape. Popular music embraces new mediums, although admittedly sometimes it is forced to (such as digital storefronts). Popular music is often featured in short-form content, drawing new listeners in from these platforms. There is a higher skill gap between musicians, and people are encouraged to connect more with the artist than the compositions themselves. There is a stronger connection between performer and piece in popular music, because the musicians have shaped that work into existence and it comes to become associated with them in a way that Bach will never be associated with the New York Philharmonic.

With this in mind, I’ve been experimenting with progressing classical music into the technoscape and seeing what happens. This is done through a mixture of things, although what’s been working for me so far is taking classical pieces, playing them on digital instruments such as synthesisers, and working with them in a DAW rather than a score. The end result, surprisingly, is something that is not too far removed from EDM! Of course, it’s debatable then how much this helps, as it doesn’t allow for anything to happen with the orchestra. But I think the focus now should be on revitalising this music, and the performance practice will follow.

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