Prompt V ✧

Please throw yourself fully into this thought experiment:
Imagine that a ghost arrives on Earth who erases all music of the past. Every score, every recording, every history book, every performance of every single piece of music written in the past is suddenly and mysteriously vanished. You can recall names of great composers (e.g. Mozart, Handel) but you can recall nothing of their artistic contributions. What is now available is only music of the present day in October 2022.
Discuss any ethical implications of playing music exclusively of the past. Then please write about the music of today that you would then perform on your instrument and include any links to this music, if possible. Why are you including the music you select?
Finally, offer your cogent opinion on this quote from Nietzsche:
If you are to venture to interpret the past, you can only do so out of the fullest exertion of the present. Only when you put forth your noblest qualities in all their strength will you divine what is worth knowing and preserving in the past. Like to like! Otherwise, you will draw the past down on you.
So basically, I'm keen to hear what music of today on your instrument is important to you and why.

As a music student, I am concious of the past at all times.
I am constantly followed by thought that anything I accomplish has already been done a thousand times over. It fills me with a sensation of hopeless pointlessness.
I cannot perform music without competeing with the legion of saxophonists standing centuries behind me.
I cannot write music without considering how it "holds up" to the vast catelogue on Spotify.

As a child, I was taught the words "new music" to be synonymous with "Sun FM Pop Radio."
It was not new versus old, but new versus good.
My perspective on what music was "good" was almost entirely limited to music made by white men in the 1960's-80's.
I rarely heard "new music" that I liked before I turned 18, finally bored of old sounds.

There is an infinity of possible new sounds, and we regurgitate the same sounds over and over again.
If I hear my mum listening to Girls Got Rhythm by AC/DC one more time I might explode.

There is so much more to "new music" than what is currently popular.
Even within the popular sphere, it just takes a bit more searching and an ear open to hearing new sounds.

To me, being a musician is more than simply playing music.
To me, being a musician is total dedication to all music is and has to offer.
Today, I am a musician. Not yesterday. God forbid, not decades or centuries before I was even born.

Let me listen to music of today.
Let me play the music of today.
Hell, let me write the music of today.

I don't want to write a Beatles song.
I realized it isn't important for a song I write to follow ABABA format.
It doesn't even have to be a song. What is a song? A birdsong? Even a song could be anything.
Recognising music as what it is-- sound-- makes it all clear.

I want to write something that's mine.
A new sound; my melody on an instrument as infiinite as my paint on a canvas.

I am still in the process of bringing myself into the world of the present.
On saxophone, the only new music I play is of my own improvisation.

I would like to play the music of my fellow students.
I recently had the honour of attending the performance of a brand new piece a friend wrote for alto sax and piano.
Complex Simplicity by Ruby Koep (2022)

A photograph I took of a heritage building, thinking of the looming presence of the past.