The Half-Life of Radicalism
At what point do radical ideas become common place? Many notions that we take for granted today were shocking in their time. The fact that the earth revolves around the sun is now simply harmless, common knowledge. However, Galileo was sent before the Inquisition, and Socrates was forced to drink poison for defending ideas like this. Ideas that are radical to you, may become quite normal to your kids.
It may seem somewhat disheartening that the most radical ideas that our generation puts forth will eventually become rote. Our most important social movements, the ones that we feel so passionately about, will inevitably become the Halloween costumes of our grandchildren.
We have to remember that becoming common is not necessarily becoming forgotten - even if they may feel the same. If this weren’t the natural course, how would the next generation of thinkers be able to usher in the next artistic or social movement, or solve the next unresolved problem of science?
Building Blocks
For instance, how many of us would expect elementary school aged kids to understand advanced principals of physics? It might be unlikely they would grasp the most advanced ideas of our time, but in fact, they can fully understand ideas that were completely novel when introduced.
The image of Isaac Newton, sitting under a tree and getting hit in the head with an apple is probably pretty well ingrained in most of us. It seems almost quaint to picture him sitting there, in an innocent time when our science was so primitive, that such an idea as the law of gravity would even need to be introduced. Then again, since we are ingrained with this image, and taught fundamentals like these at an early age, none of us can really imagine being without this knowledge. Therefore, we can’t help but build upon the knowledge of our predecessors.
Like another physicist with ideas that were completely radical for his time: Albert Einstein. Einstein introduced concepts that no one had ever thought of. However, if Newtonian Physics hadn’t existed, what boundaries of science would Einstein have pushed? If gravity hadn’t hit Newton in the head that day, what would Einstein have built upon?
Decline of Dissonance
Sometimes radicalism doesn’t hit you in the head, it hits you in the face. In 1913 in Paris the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky debuted a symphony called “The Rite of Spring”. Well-to-do Parisians came dressed up and excited to see the high art of the Russian Ballet. We can probably assume they weren’t expecting their night out to be chronicled in history books.
Based on the name of the Ballet and other contemporary symphonies, we can also probably assume that the audience was expecting a lilting, joyful celebration of spring. What they received instead was dark, foreboding, and relentless. “The Rite of Spring” utilized dissonant notes, which can be a little unnerving to listen to, and were highly uncommon in the classical music of the time. For even more dramatic effect, the dissonance did not let up throughout the piece. This particular symphony was unlike anything they had ever heard.
Art is supposed to evoke emotion, and we’ve all been moved by music somehow, but how affected can we really be by a few instruments playing together on a stage? Well, the Parisians rioted. It started off slowly with boos and whistles, but eventually the audience was screaming, fist fights were breaking out, and the chairs they had been sitting in were being picked up and thrown across the room.
The piece went on to be performed both as a ballet and as a standalone symphony, and audiences consistently failed to riot in every subsequent performance. Even so, would you let a child listen to music that had literally once incited a riot? Well some of you may have, and some of your parents may have, since Disney included it in Fantasia in 1940. In less than 30 years “The Rite of Spring” went from being earth shatteringly different, to common enough to be the soundtrack of a cartoon for kids.
Synthesize Me
Not every radical idea falls on your head, or hits you in the face, some take time to take root. In the mid 50’s Dr. Robert Moog created a musical invention radically different than any musical instrument that existed. I believe it was partially to satisfy his own curiosity, and partially because he wanted to show it to the world, just to see what people would do with it. He couldn’t have predicted how it would affect popular music for decades to come.
His invention was the first musical synthesizer, a device which could replicate the sounds of other instruments, and make a single person sound like they were playing multiple instruments at once. It was far from an immediate success, and it was originally mostly used by producers and engineers in recording studios. The first public concerts featuring the instrument didn’t incite riots, but they did spark heated debates whether what was coming out of this machine was “real music”.
Eventually other artists caught on and even big name acts like the The Beatles included the synthesizer with their other instruments. Although the original device was analog, the Moog synthesizer became the birthplace of electronic music, and led to the creation of new sounds and techniques that are commonplace in the recording studios for virtually every genre of music today.
Moog said that when looked at the circuit board in his device, he didn’t just see a piece of machinery - he saw the sounds that it could make, and viewed it as a musical instrument. Just like Einstein, Moog built upon the work of his predecessors, and like Stravinsky, he was not afraid of introducing radical new music.
Eppur Si Muove
We find it amusing to think of Newton’s breakthrough discovery coming from an apple falling on his head, and its quite humorous now to think of formal society types being incited to riot by nothing more than a little musical dissonance. Future generations may find it just as puzzling why the invention of the synthesizer was radical.
The poet Rabindranath Tagore said “Do not limit a child to your own learning, for they were born in another time.” I think that what he is saying is that, just because there may be a problem that we haven’t solved, it is truly not our place to say the problem is unsolvable - we don’t know what the next generation will come up with.
When we pass on our knowledge - when we show the next generation what we know, inherently we are also teaching them what we don’t know. The earth continues to revolve, and our ideas and social movements bleed into the next generation, who are also tasked with solving the problems that we cannot.
Legend has it that after formally & publicly renouncing his belief that the earth revolves around the sun, Galileo muttered a few words under his breath - “Eppur si muove” - “and yet, it moves…”
