1790s vs. 1890s vs. 1990s vs. 2090s

the thread that had to be made.

no avoiding it

9090909090909090BCs

possible next poll: pre-human music vs. post-human music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLFVGwGQcB0

here's some evidence in favor of the 1890s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPKe9OfWs-M

La Belle Époque yo

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Image-Lottie_Collins_sings_and_dances_to_the_tunes_of_Ta-Ra-Ra_Boom-de-ay_in_a_Bromo-Seltzer_ad.jpg vs. http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/9964375/Whoomp+There+It+Is.jpg

"the chronic" also cures neuralgia iirc

Great poll!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1790s_in_music
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1890s_in_music
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1990s_in_music

Beethoven vs. Satie vs. Nirvana vs. ??????

beethoven didn't really start composing his masterpieces until the 1800s iirc

but a lot of mozart's best stuff was composed during his final year -- 1790-91. and i'm hoping ilxors more knowledgeable about classical music will come out of the woodwork to talk about their favorite stuff from these decades.

Hm, this is interesting. As far as European art music is concerned, both the 1790s and 1890s were somewhat fallow periods imo: nearly all of Mozart's work was done before 1790 and Beethoven's best work came in the 19th century (although those early piano sonatas are pretty great). The best of Romanticism predates the 1890s and the best modern works came later. (Debussy and Schoenberg did a few good things in this time but both did much more in the 1900s.) I'm not the biggest fan of late Romanticism tbh. Even ragtime really came into its own in the 1900s, right? Did Joplin write any keepers in the 1890s other than "The Maple Leaf Rag"? Maybe I could give props to some Sousa marches. At the same time, because many really great things were starting to come to life in the 1890s, perhaps it would have been a really exciting time.

The 1990s seem too close to really evaluate in the same way but some pretty great things happened with electronic music and guitar noise imo.

xposts

but a lot of mozart's best stuff was composed during his final year -- 1790-91

Other than The Magic Flute, what?

(and I'm personally not the biggest opera fan so that doesn't sway me all that much)

i was thinking of the magic flute and requiem

Oh yeah, the requiem.

I only ever listen to Mozart's instrumental music, honestly.

it's interesting that the 1790s and 1890s seem relatively fallow compared to the decades that preceded and succeeded them. in literature and the visual arts i don't think this was the case at all... there was a lot of end of century excitement, especially (i think) in france, which was associated with cultural innovation. also chekhov's best stories and plays were written in this decade.

oh yeah, and the first narrative films appeared during this period.

1890s has plenty of new technologies enabling new artistic mediums too. The photograph, the motion picture, and the recorded sound were all in their infancy in this period, right?

The phonograph was invented in 1877, the flat gramophone disc in 1887, the shellac disc in 1902. Nickelodeons emerged in the 1890s.

The birth of Tin Pan Alley is also worth noting, with "After the Ball", the first multi-million-selling pop song, published in 1892.

1890s seem like they're winning.

At the same time, because many really great things were starting to come to life in the 1890s, perhaps it would have been a really exciting time.

Something to be said for this, definitely. Being around for the early works of Debussy, Schoeberg, Joplin, the birth of TPA: that would have had to be something.

Requiem was Mozart's Life After Death, it was already commissioned so some other dude had to finish it off.

1890s wz p great in literature, thats all I know...

Veering off topic, what were literary highlights of the 1890s? I'm no literary scholar but looking at Wikipedia lists and trying to remember undergrad lit courses, it seems a bit like a fallow period there too, right now, compared to the 1860s or 1910s. Admittedly, I don't care that much for Kipling or Wells; if you do, it would have probably been a great decade. "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" is an all-time favourite so I can't write that off, and "Picture of Dorian Gray" is pretty great.

I guess the two big Hardy novels (Jude & Tess) would be the Eng Lit canon highlights (along with WIlde's plays, some Henry James, maybe very early Conrad), but as a decade I think of it being interesting for genre fiction finding its feet, & stuff that's trad'ly been seen as minor or marginal but seems to have more force now (Machen).

I think there's a lot happening in France, but my chronology's not really straight for those lads.

A throw of the dice will never abolish LAD

Stoker's Dracula is 1897 - and Turn of the Screw is 1898 - so yeah, gd decade for horror fic

chekhov's ward no. 6 was published in 1892 and that's one of the best things ever written imo, maybe even the best short story of all time. it had an extremely formative impact on lenin, by some reports inspiring him to get serious about revolutionary politics during a period when he was almost convinced by his mother to be satisfied kicking back and living the life of a landowner. also in the world of design, art nouveau was in full swing, and art nouveau architecture is very important historically, as 19th century architecture was up to that point very retro, either neo-classical or gothic revival.

Veering off topic, what were literary highlights of the 1890s?

One of the best courses I took in college was on Literature of the 1890s. (This was in fall 1999, so we were all feeling a little fin-de-siecle.) We read Stoker's Dracula, Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray and An Ideal Husband, Chopin's The Awakening, Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, James's The Turn of the Screw, maybe others I don't recall.

http://lisahistory.net/hist111/pw/images/mababy.jpg vs. http://c3.cduniverse.ws/resized/250x500/music/540/1098540.jpg

Turn of the Screw is amazing, as is Dracula. Two of my favorite books for sure.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/1896hottimeh.jpg/220px-1896hottimeh.jpg vs. http://jimmydahl.se/record_collection/covers/bloodhound_gang-fire_water_burn_s.jpg

there are tons of brilliant little details in dracula. just the whole comedy of the first section, when dracula makes harker stay in his castle long past the period when they had finished hashing out the paperwork they needed to do, which only annoys harker at first because he doesn't know the count is a vampire. the part where dracula freaks out ans smashes harker's shaving mirror and harker, instead of thinking "why did he react so strangely?" is just like "what the hell dracula!"

Yeah, Dracula really left an impression on me. Loved the way the text is constructed from pieces (diaries, letters, etc.), loved the glimpses of modernity amid the Gothic.

not a big fiction reader so I might take the 1790s if we throw in discursive & political writing - Blake & early Wordsworth/Coleridge, Gibbon's memoirs, last of Burke, Paine, gloomy fag-end of Cowper

1790s was also the period of the french revolution. lot of good political writing came out of that, including the defence of gracchus babeuf

i was imagining this thread to be mostly about music, but i like how the discussion is moving toward more holistic evaluations of the cultural output of these periods so that's fine.

Here's a 1990s track that may well have been influenced by the Erik Satie piece linked above:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJIxH7UChSM

that reminds me. any discussion of the 90s -- any 90s -- should probably reckon with this track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kB9LRZ0sAs

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5235/7114304863_b88e72a0a6_o.jpg vs. http://shockerdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/lem.jpg

Stay with me on this one...

http://content.bandzoogle.com/users/ParlorRecord/images/photos/gallery/5355126.jpg?1 vs. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iJvEtIv9Csc/TZKA8NZZNkI/AAAAAAAAA-Q/eGon_0L0rd0/s400/Basement%2BJaxx%2BRed%2BAlert.jpg

I honestly think "The Maple Leaf Rag" is far more significant than anything Satie did. In the 1890s. Transfigured Night on the other hand...

Extra period there

Haydn seems to have still been in his prime in the 1790s.

http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=1256625&t=w vs. http://991.com/NewGallery/Primitive-Radio-Gods-Standing-Outside-497166.jpg

http://blackimagestereotype.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/b714-impecunious-davis.jpeg vs. http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/500/75012772/No+Scrubs++PNG.png

I think i have the same shirt as impecunious davis

Are we just resolved to the 1890s then? It seems, of all these decades, to have been the most exciting time to be a musician. The 1990s were an era of technological change in music consumption too because filesharing emerged in this period.

"It's an exciting time to be a musician"

Hehe

Yeah im gonna say 1890s. Best time for a musician and music fans too. No music industry effing things up, if you have a favorite pop song then you probably have a deep relationship w it because you've got the sheet music and you learned how to play it on piano or guitar, or maybe you aren't even a musician but your friend is and all the songs you hear a filtered through them rather than TV commercials.

there was a music industry in the 1890s -- publishing (who do you think put out sheet music?) and live entertainment.

You could even argue that the emergence of Tin Pan Alley marked the real birth of the pop music industry.

music hall was going strong then too. Marie Lloyd was around then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Lloyd

Yeah but it's a far cry from the RIAA and Ticketmaster and MTV and stuff. More decentralized, more organic, more diversified.

bwahahaa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79aRKSur8h4

^ Marie Lloyd's famous number

This is pretty interesting stuff:

Over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, the middle class of Europe and North America increased in both numbers and prosperity. This increase produced a corresponding rise in the domestic importance of the piano, as ever more families became able to afford pianos and piano instruction. The piano also became common in public institutions, such as schools, hotels, and public houses. As elements of the Western middle class lifestyle gradually spread to other nations, the piano became common in these nations as well, for example in Japan.

To understand the rise of the piano among the middle class, it is helpful to remember that before mechanical and electronic reproduction, music was in fact performed on a daily basis by ordinary people. For instance, the working people of every nation generated a body of folk music, which was transmitted orally down through the generations and sung by all. The parents of Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) could not read music, yet Haydn's father (who worked as a wheelwright) taught himself to play the harp, and the Haydn family frequently played and sang together. With rising prosperity, the many families that could now afford pianos and music adapted their home-grown musical abilities to the new instrument, and the piano became a major source of music in the home.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_history_of_the_piano

Having a piano/piano lessons was definitely a sign for me that someone was middle class. A few of my friends had exactly that (yes we mocked them).

The other middle class signifier was owning 'a bbc master/micro system' for "educational purposes" .

Dunno if this was just a west of scotland thing or not though

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Want to know who the optimists are that voted for the 2090s