dogma that could inform the direction composers take. In neither of
these two cases is the composer significantly freer than the other, though
they might feelfreer if underlying conditions match what they are used
to, or what they are otherwise more personally inclined towards.
Finally, for all his despair of artistic developments in the twentieth
century, there is a thread of optimism running through Popper’s account
about the prospects for art. It is a common theme in Popper’s writings
that the origins and nature of the dogmas we hold are comparatively
unimportant; that what counts is our ability to test and correct them, as
contemporary composers have perhaps been doing with the assumptions
of their modernist predecessors. Whatever misapprehensions or social
circumstances led to the decline of art, measured in whatever terms you
like, in the twentieth century, there is no necessary barrier to musical
progress (again, measured as you will). In his discussion of tradition
quoted above, Popper goes on to say the following:It does not matter what you have and where you start. You must always make
little adjustments. Since you will always have to make them, it is very much
more sensible and reasonable to start with what happens to exist at the
moment, because of these things which exist we at least know where the
shoe pinches. We at least know of certain things that they are bad and that
we want them changed. If we make our wonderful brave new world it will
be quite a time before we find out what is wrong with it.^16In these lines, Popper is writing about the value of tradition in general;
yet, it is not difficult to apply his comments more specifically to the tra-
ditional in art.108 Jonathan Le Cocq