I recall reading the following statement from the Wikipedia article of Richard Strauss: “Along with Gustav Mahler, [Strauss] represents the late flowering of German Romanticism after Wagner.”
Fair enough - a good way of putting it. Indeed, I love listening to Strauss for the same reasons I love listening to other German Romantic masters, but on top of those reasons, there’s a bonus to Strauss: a sort of “new-and improved,” boiled-down efficiency afforded to him by his lateness relative to the Beethoven-Wagner arc. Listening to Beethoven entails some listening to Mozart; that is to say, if you’re in the mood for some penetrating romanticism, Beethoven serves it as a sauce on top of a Classical base. Listening to Wagner entails wading through literal hours of sludgy voice leading and heavy-handed leitmotific “development” (insofar as repetition is development). Strauss cuts to the chase, and to put on Salome or Ein Alpensinfonie is to put on a compact, juicy dose of romantic modernism — all the bells and whistles one loves without much fat. The “late flowering” Strauss represents marks a great moment in that particular musical tradition, where Strauss, looking back on the past, picks and chooses his favorite techniques of the old masters and dresses them up, repackages them for an audience who doesn’t want to sift. A “Wagner’s Greatest Hits” album, if you will.
While German Romanticism has come and gone, other traditions are coming ‘round that bend, where the accumulation of early masterpieces affords the creation of refined, retrospective masterpieces. My gut tells me that jazz is not quite there; instead, jazz may be in awkward period after the initial thrust but before the seeds of late flowers blossom. I therefore predict excellent albums resurrecting the best ancestors of jazz a few years from now. Perhaps important centennials (Bird’s being less than a month away at the time of writing) will set the stage, make the time feel right. Right now, my generally low opinion of contemporary jazz comes from the mixed messages sent about the past. Some jazz musicians throw out the baby with the bathwater; they reject past idioms (swing, tonal harmony, blues) without innovating to fill in the gulfs left by removing the DNA of jazz. We can all conjure memories of limp, tepid straight-8ths modal jazz featuring arbitrary forms, unmemorable melodies, and gratuitous cookie-cutter solos. Reject the past, subvert it, fine. But you better put something in its place. On the other hand, puritanical jazz musicians lament the de-emphasis of swing, harmony, and blues a la Ellington, Parker, Monk, etc., but all too often, the music of these contemporary jazz Luddites merely imitates and dilutes the masters they revere. Did you really need to record Inner Urge in 2016 and quote Joe Henderson’s solo to prove that you’re a “student of the music?” Has anyone ever said, “wow, this Charlie Parker cover is so much better than the original!” No. Figure out where you stand, jazz boys, and whatever you do, do it right. There are many pairs of ears that would be receptive to either a) truly innovative, probing music descended from jazz, or b) truly loving, detail-oriented treatments of the great moments of the past, i.e. late flowerings. For what it’s worth, examples of the former do exist, though few and far between. I just heard some of Jacob Garchik’s new big band album Clear Line, which is innovative and subversive: a big band album with no rhythm section (yes, that means no dumb tinkly piano intros, no over-the-top drum fills, no ironically un-interactive solos). Dana Saul’s Ceiling is stunning start-to-finish: real composition, real playing, stylistically unfettered by jazz “best practices.” Innovative, beautiful, and polished. But, I have not yet heard what I would call a late flowering of jazz (or bebop, swing, or whatever, if you want to get specific). I wait eagerly for jazz’s answer to Death and Transfiguration.
The reason the phrase “late flowering” came to mind in the first place actually has nothing to do with music. I think we are currently in a period fertile for late flowerings in video games, despite how quickly the history of video games moves. A decade is an aeon in games, and accordingly, one can look on the watershed games of the 90’s as artifacts of an ancient Golden Age. My most recently completed game, Ghost of Tsushima, has essentially zero innovation on any fundamental level. Yet, it is great. It is a late flowering of the broad “adventure game” formula, essentially a grown-up Zelda game. Late flowerings are especially valuable in games because the main agent of poor aging in games is frustrating carry-overs from the arcade era plus technological limitation. We don’t need finite lives anymore, and 16 colors just doesn’t seem like enough these days. But there is more to what makes Ghost of Tsushima great, for it is not just a piling-on of big, new features. Skyrim pushed the open-world concept to its 2011 limits, and it is surely great and important, but the fact of the matter is that much of The Elder Scrolls is repetitive, artificially bloated, unrefined, and ultimately boring. One wades through Skyrim the way one wades through a Wagner opera: the great moments are enough to keep one sucked in, despite some of the slog. Ghost of Tsushima’s brilliance is a result of its advantage of being able to look back on those old games trim the fat. The world is not overwhelmingly huge, but there are not many empty regions — the nature itself, the wind blowing through the pampas grass and the sun glinting off a decapitated Mongol’s helmet, is beautiful and obviously lovingly crafted. There is not an infinite number of quests, but most quests in the game have some novel story or gameplay element, so the game circumvents the creepy feeling of RPG deja vu. The collectibles only come in a few types, and there’s none of the bullshit of inventory management or encumberment; there’s no frustratingly arcane crafting system. One gets the sense playing the game that the developers respect the player - a fantastic and all-too-rare feeling.
Persona 5 is another perfect example: perhaps the greatest big JRPG of all time if one factors out nostalgia. Hundreds of JRPGs have come along since the first Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, each with its own blend of successful and unsuccessful experiments in gameplay and presentation. FFVII had an engaging story and a generally cool world, but it really dragged during the corridors of random battles. Paper Mario has a timeless and lovely style, but the gameplay is almost trivial. Earthbound is genuinely funny, with excellent style and music, but the graphics don’t exactly hold up today, nor does the relatively uninspired turn-based combat. By contrast, Persona 5 has it all. The art and music is on point, the writing is surprisingly good, even in translation, and the interface generally is smooth, intuitive, and engaging. There’s a healthy dose of the kinds of complex systems some of us love in RPGs (in this case, the creation of new personas, the social links, the “one more” chain attacks), but the systems never get too arbitrary or opaque, nor are they strictly required to play the game. There’s essentially no grinding or throwaway characters, no complicated yet forgettable lore. In other words, Persona 5 is the late flowering of the JRPG because it distills the genre’s strengths and ameliorates or solves its weaknesses.
The Witness is a late flowering of the first-person puzzle game a la Myst. Hollow Knight is the late flowering of the Metroidvania. Hyper Light Drifter is the late flowering of 2D Zelda. None of these games are masterpieces because of innovation; they are masterpieces because of refinement and good judgement.
I wish late flowerings would pop up more in music, as they have in games. At the same time, games, the primary artistic frontier of the early 21st century, tend to lean into nostalgia too much since the artform progresses so quickly: good for these late flowerings but perhaps at the expense of true innovation. I am not sufficiently expert enough in other fields to judge the innovation versus late flowering balance, but it certainly is fascinating to consider. What will be the last great novel? Has it already been written? Could a genius chef innovate say, Italian food, which is so recognizable and beloved for its basics? What is the most innovative garden in the world? Have there been late flowerings of earlier styles of blacksmithing?
Sadly, progress is slow due to the seemingly unending low flame of misery known as COVID-19. Fingers crossed that energy is being stored rather than diffused, so that whenever the floodgates open, there’s a real flood of creativity waiting to burst, not just a dribble.