Is Music Infinite? Exploring the Limits and Possibilities of Musical Creation
Explore the boundaries and potential infinity of music in this comprehensive lecture. Delve into historical efforts to catalog musical materials, from Carnatic melacarta to Arabic maqam wazn, and contemporary attempts to pre-copyright melodies. Investigate the simplification of tempos, lyrics, and chord progressions in popular music over time. Examine the concept of infinite music through examples like the Shepard tone and works by Bach, Schubert, and John Coltrane. Learn about musical morphospace, the intricacies of blues organ playing, and the controversial idea of copyrighting all possible melodies. Engage with thought-provoking questions about the limits of musical perception and imagination, concluding with a discussion on the Musical Library of Babel and its implications for the future of music creation.