“THEN ALONG CAME MIDI!”⁶¹

Chapter:

CHAPTER 10 Millennium's End

Source:

MUSIC IN THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Author(s):

Richard Taruskin

The exclamation is Lansky's, in recognition of the “great and revolutionary accomplishment” that, as we have seen, some writers have greeted as the dawn of a new musical era. Like the earlier elite phase of computer music, but this time by design rather than fortuitously, the new musical era was the by-product of industrial innovation in pursuit of profits. It was literally—and directly—created by capitalism, and can stand therefore as a musical monument to the global triumph of the free market and the worldwide conversion to an “information-based” economy. Since the latter is the standard economists’ criterion of postmodernity, the “MIDI revolution” is perhaps the most intrinsically entitled of all late twentieth-century musical developments to the status of “postmodernist” standard-bearer.

Citation (MLA):

Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 10 Millennium's End." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2025. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume5/actrade-9780195384857-div1-010012.xml>.

Citation (APA):

Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 10 Millennium's End. In Oxford University Press, Music in the Late Twentieth Century. New York, USA. Retrieved 15 Mar. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume5/actrade-9780195384857-div1-010012.xml

Citation (Chicago):

Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 10 Millennium's End." In Music in the Late Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 15 Mar. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume5/actrade-9780195384857-div1-010012.xml