A Timeline of Musical and Literary Forms

        Part of the course of study for becoming a music major at Middlebury College, when I was a student there, was a year long sequence of music history courses. It began with plainchant, in which multiple voices sing in unison (imagine the monks in Monty Python and the Holy Grail) and early forms of musical notation. It moved through the development of Baroque, Classical, and Romantic music. It carried us all the way through twentieth century experimentation in the classical world, but also into jazz and other modern genres.
        In the development of music over time, we learned about evolutions in harmony, rhythm, instrumentation, and theory. We saw how the larger forms of music--the genres--changed, but also how the mechanics of music changed. The history of music became one complex narrative in which individual pieces became indicative of an unfolding web of styles. The strict rules of Baroque music (think of the formality of Bach) gave way over time to increasing melodic indulgence in the Classical and Romantic periods. Harmonies thickened and got messy. The rules of early order relented until, in some cases, jazz seemed to hold sway even in the classical paradigm. But the mid-20th century composers sought to reclaim music from entropy’s grasp; they played mathematical games and applied new rules for the purpose of experimentation.
        Each period responded to the previous, growing in complexity, swinging the pendulum further or backwards, driven by technologies (the piano, the phonograph, the electric guitar) and theories (tonality, tone rows). By the end, I remember having an understanding of the difference between a Baroque melody and a modern melody, between classical harmonies and jazz harmonies, between march rhythms and funk rhythms. I could place most pieces in time by hearing not only an excerpt of a piece, but even one part of a piece, one instrument, or one voice--even played on a different instrument.

        I wonder if the same can be done in language? Could I distinguish a sentence from a 19th century novel and a sentence from a 21st? Could I identify an unfamiliar sentence by a writer simply by looking at the way it’s put together?
        What are the grammatical rules or patterns that define the 16th century? The 17th century? the 20th century? What are the stylistic decisions that dominate each era? What was the evolution in form? Could I draw a map of the essential elements of literature for the past 500 years? Does it start defined by poetry and the essay? Does the evolution grow through styles at first, moving through prose and fiction? Then does grammar loosen in language just as harmony did in music? Does literature’s cutting and pasting of random passages correspond in development to music’s mechanical tone patterning?
        What would a visualization of this look like? Could I create a timeline in which “thee” and “thy” enter and exit the popular lexicon? When did popular writing shift from verse to prose? Was the birth of the novel contemporary with the birth of the symphony? What about sentence structure? Is Hemingway/DeLillo minimalism similar to Phillip Glass or Steve Reich? And what about non-fiction? In what ways is a sentence by Bacon or Galileo distinguishable from a sentence by E. O. Wilson or Carl Sagan?
        Anybody out there have the time or inclination? A visual history of literature in English would be a fascinating resource.

Executive Summary of Walter Isaacson's "Steve Jobs"

Executive summary of Isaacson's "Steve Jobs":

- Remove everything that is unnecessary.

- Be ruthless about building an A team.

- Make stuff you believe in.

- Collaborate often through vigorous discussion.

- Push yourself and others to do the impossible now.

- Make great experiences by simplifying.

- Own your work and protect it.

- Live at intersection of intellect and intuition.

But read the book. In the same way that you understand a proverb much more after you've had a life a experience that demonstrates it, these will mean much, much more when you see them in the context of Steve Jobs' life.

Plus, you'll also discover Jobs' equally as compelling character traits: from his idealism to his irascibility.