| | | | | | Chapter 2
What Is Modern Anyway? | | | | | | | | | One late August eve, as the Maestro, Lucetta and I wound our way through old man Brumble's Bough (pronounced and smells like bog) returning from a stirring premi re of a new piece called Ova-Nova an intriguing work by Merzy Fhigmolle, a local turkey farmer/composer Lucetta, our able-bodied assistant and constant travelling companion, suddenly turned to Colli and me and asked, diffidently: | | | | | | | | | "What is Modern anyway?" and promptly fell into a stagnant, fetid, thicket-hidden mud hole, as she wasn't looking where she was going. It wasn't until much, much later, in the wee hours of early morning as we sat 'neath the dry, cracked branches of the dead Dutch Elm behind the barn, airing Lucetta's drenched apparel and thus blacking out a considerable amount of moonlight, that the Maestro musicological wizard of the ivory tower was able to respond to Lucetta's tossed-off then bogged-down query. | | | | | | | | | "Modern is as old as the hills, Lucetta," started off the Maestro, and with that she fell into Somnia's arms, wrapped tightly in Cliff's or Clarice's winter blanket. | | | | | | | | | "Go on!" I urged immediately, as Colli can be a bit sensitive to audience-dozing, and the notes I subsequently scratched down on a whitewashed board of the compost shed form the basis of this chapter. | | | | | | | | | "Modern is as old as the hills, and I mean that in both senses," Colli, went on, grateful for the Stoney Ripple libation I'd provided. | | | | | | | | | Firstly: What we call Modern Music is really quite old, starting, as most music historians generally agree, roughly around 1900. | | | | |
