Monday Morning Story Conference, January 1400:

Showrunner: Alright, lt's get started.
Writers: (groan)
Showrunner: I take it you've all seen the ratings for the thirteenth century....
Writers: It's not our fault! The audience just isn't there since they canceled Rome! We've done our best with what we *smack* OW! OW! Ok, we lost advertisers!
Showrunner: Shaddup. You, Moore!
Ronald Moore: What, boss? My stuff is great!
Showrunner: So great, that you're fired for about four centuries.
Moore: Hey, waitasec! (trapdoor opens underneath him, Moore falls into molten lake of felgercarb) Frakkiing Booooooomerrrrrrrr (trapdoor slams shut).
Showrunner: Anybody else? Abrams, maybe? Wheaton?
JJ Abrams, Will Wheaton: (stare at floor)
Showrunner: OK, then. We're introducing a new wuxia thing called gunpowder. The Hong Kong guys can't seem to use it for anything but fireworks. Make it work!
Writers: Yes, Boss.
Showrunner: And, I want more booze and sex. Start some kind of party. Try Italy, and those go-go money guys. I want production values bumped up, bigtime!
Writers: Yes, Boss.
Showrunner: And another thing. Limey babes are *hot*. We need to get the female demo back. I want a Limey SuperBitch Mentat Babe, one that kicks everyones' asses.
Writers: Yes, Boss.
Showrunner: And, make her a READHEAD! WITH A BUZZSAW MOUTH!
Writers: yes, Boss (grumble , I wanted France to win)
Showrunner: SHADDAP!! GBTW!

Originally Posted by Chas'88

I've been re-watching the excellent BBC miniseries "I, Claudius" (1976) and I think I have the Roman Saeculum from that time roughly figured out:

Julio-Claudian Saeculum

27 BC - 14 AD = 42 years (Augustus Caesar) - High & Awakening

14 AD - 37 AD = 23 years (Tiberius) - Unraveling

37 AD - 41 AD = 4 years (Caligula) - Unraveling/Crisis

41 AD - 54 AD = 13 years (Claudius) - Crisis
54 AD - 69 AD = 15 years (Nero & Year of 4 Emperors) - Crisis

Burning of Rome under Nero = Crisis Climax

August Caesar = Civic
Livia Drusilla = Civic
Tiberius = Artist
Drusus = Artist
Julia the Elder = Artist
Antonia Minor = Artist
Lucius Caesar = Artist
Gaius Caesar = Artist
Germanicus = Prophet
Claudius = Prophet
Agrippina the Elder = Prophet
Livilla = Prophet
Sejanus = Prophet
Castor = Prophet
Posthumous Agrippa = Prophet
Caligula = Nomad
Agrippina the Younger = Nomad/Civic
Messalina = Civic
Nero = Civic/Artist
Britannicus = Artist

~Chas'88

The time of Claudius seems more like a very, very nasty 3T to me. With Claudius cast in the same role our own saeculum cast Ronnie Reagan in. Other than that, good work.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

The time of Claudius seems more like a very, very nasty 3T to me. With Claudius cast in the same role our own saeculum cast Ronnie Reagan in. Other than that, good work.

I'm going off the impressions I was left with by the series to be honest.

And while I was doing that ASB'65 and myself roughly mapped out the Jewish saeculum as we saw it (liable to change as she's now reading that new Zealot book):

Kingdom of Judea

20 BC - 6 AD = 1T

Famine ends in Judea, Herod the Great starts rebuilding the Second Temple and a bunch of other building projects, By 14 BC Judea had become a prosperous kingdom, Second Temple is finished in 10 BC re-establishing the Pharisees' place in society.

Herod the Great is proclaimed as "King of the Jews" but he also goes out of his way to establish himself as the ruler of non-Jews in Judea by building Greek and Roman temples. Grecco-Roman population and influence in Judea grows during his reign.

Herod the Great eventually dies, but had had disputes with his sons so he kept changing his will to determine who would succeed him. When he dies his sons appeal to Rome to decide, Rome splits the kingdom into three parts each ruled by a different son (as per one of Herod's wills) but gets rid of the position of "King of the Jews". A fourth part is also included and given to Philip the Tetrarch, but his lands are eventually incorporated into Syria.

~*~*~

6 AD - 41 AD = 2T

The increase in Grecco-Roman influence begins to upset the Jews. They think it's gone to far when a census is called for in 6 AD. Suddenly a new group is formed called the "Zealots". They are a religious based group who think that the only ruler of Judea should be God. Other splinter groups start popping up as well such as the Sadducees and the Essenes. Rebellions continue to occur under Emperor Tiberius against his right hand man Sejanus. Around 27 AD John the Baptist starts his ministries, and about that time Jesus (as he is called by the Greek members of Judea) does as well. Sometime in the early 30s Paul has his conversion and then goes out to spread the word. Continued discontent over Grecco-Roman influence grows until it comes to a head with the "Crisis under Caligula" (37 - 41 AD). Some Jews in other Roman provinces (notably the bread basket of Egypt) as well as Jerusalem had been rebelling. In response Caligula built a statue of himself inside the Jewish temple. It should be noted that Caligula for a time also considered himself the "Messiah" of the Jews, but then he also considered himself the living Jove. Caligula also gives Herod Agrippa the title of King of the Jews and ends the Tetrarchy. Caligula's statue causes a full fledge rebellion. The crisis ends when Herod Agrippa manages to convince Caligua to have the statue removed for the sake of law and order which ends the rebellion.

41 AD - 66 AD = 3T

More people claiming to be Messiah figures begin to pop up. Even Herod Agrippa tries proclaiming himself as the Messiah before dying five days later. Herod had done it as part of a plot to take the Eastern half of the Roman Empire away from Claudius--who had interestingly enough also been a friend of his. It should be noted that Jews viewed Agrippa favorably while Jewish-Christians did not. Priests start dividing themselves into smaller and smaller factions. Mostly though the Romans leave the Judeans alone as Rome is involved in its own Crisis problems and this is a quiet time.

66 AD - 92 AD = 4T

Nero introduces the "Imperial Cult" to Judea, thus begins the Great Jewish Revolt which results in the destruction of Herod's Second Temple in 70--which was after Rome's Crisis had ended so they could respond "extra hard". The extermination of many Jews in Judea, and the establishment of the Jewish diaspora also comes from this "extra hard response". In 92 Arippa II dies and the Herodian dynasty ends, and Iudea is incorporated as a full-fledge province of Rome.

Key Characters:

Herod the Great: Civic
Herod Archelaus: Artist
Philip I: Artist
Herod Antipas: Artist/Prophet
Herodias: Prophet
Herod Agrippa I aka Agrippa the Great: Prophet
Herod Chalcis: Prophet???
Judas of Galilee: Prophet
Paul: Prophet/Nomad
John, the Baptist: Prophet/Nomad
Jesus: Prophet/Nomad
Philip II: Nomad
Salome: Nomad
Herod Agrippa II: Nomad

And after doing that, suddenly the "Roman response" to the "Jewish problem" made sense. Rome was a turning ahead of Judea at the time, so when Rome got out of its own Crisis issues with the beginning of the next dynasty it was able to put down the rebellions in Iudea with a bit of extra oomph.

~Chas'88

Chas, have you taken a look at my British turning scheme? Since I "show my work" it should be possible to see the method I use. But I'll outline it here and use the current turning as a illustration. I look for turnings in different kinds of history: political, economic, cultural (sometimes) and generational. Political history is characterized by what I call Butlerian spirals, which comes from Bob Butler's spiral of violence concept. Unlike Bob's concept which looks solely at violence, my spiral concept includes any sort of political conflict, even if it never rises to the point of actual violence.

We have a financial spiral that began in 1997 and ended with financial panic in 2008. Another spiral then began over what to do about the panic, which is still ongoing. We have a terrorism spiral than began in 2001 and might be considered over when the Afghanistan war ends. It is closely associated with a national security vs. individual freedom/privacy which began with the Patriot Act and is ongoing. So the political crisis might have begun as early as 1997, or 2001 or 2008 depending on what the other kinds of history say.

For economics there was a shift to a soft depression in 2008. This dating is confirmed by the fall from plateau which definitely happened in 2008-9.

Then there are generations. To do generations you chose your generation length. For medieval times I used 26 years since established saecula averaged about 104 years long back then. For the current turning, I would use 20 years because the average length of modern generations has been 20 years. The adult generations at the start of a 4T are Artists, Prophets and Nomads, whose birth is associated with the 4T, 1T and 2T. So you get the generational projection for the start of the 4T by adding 80, 60 and 40 to 1929, 1946 and 1964 to give 2009, 2006, 2004 for an average of 2006. Since the terrorism spiral now appears to have mostly played itself out, I am inclined to view 911 as a 3T spiral giving a political spiral start in 2008.

Averaging 2006, 2008, 2008 together gives 2007 as the consensus start for the 4T. This is what I would write down for a Medieval turning. Since I am living through this period, I would used the election and panic in 2008 as the trigger and set the date at 2008.

If I assume 22 year generations (my paradigm predicts generations are getting longer) You would get 2009 as the generational start. The economic date would remain 2008. The 2008 spiral is still relevant. If you average these three you get 2009. 2008 is still the best choice.

Note than the consensus start shifted only 2 years by changing the assuming generational length from 20 to 22 years (an assuming 8 year increase in saeculum length). This shows the "anchoring power" of the other strands of history, making turning assignment less sensitive to subjective choices. For the medieval turnings the economic turning points are determined from price data and construction starts frequency in a mechanical fashion just as the 2008 turning point was determined by a structural feature in US producer prices revealed by mechanical procedure. No subjectivism here. If one uses a constant generational length, as I did for the medieval turnings, this removes subjectivism from the generational date. The date given is entirely based on the prior turnings (or future turnings if working backwards).

Subjectivism arises in the selection of political spirals. When one identifies turnings by inspection, as most of us do, we look only at political spirals and the result is going to be subjective. THis is why Chas looks at 1st century Rome and sees different turnings than Kepi, Kurt Horner, or Dave McGuiness does. Sometimes you get lucky and there are only a few spirals and everyone one can agree. For example the two civil wars in 13th century England, the one associated with the Magna Carta in 1215-17 and the one associated with Simon Monfort 1264-1265, which just happen to be spaced about 50 years apart (rough two 26 year generaitons) making them a pair of social moment turnings (i.e. 2T and 4Ts). The period between them is largely devoid of spirals and assignment is easy. The Noman Conquest is similarly easy, Chas picked up the spiral beginning in 1251 just like that.

France is going to be very messy politically. I don't think there will be nicely separated clear-cut spirals that can allow one to establish solid turnings that can be used to production generational turnings for the adjacent periods. This would not be a problem if I had an "anchor" timeline like that provied by the economic turnings in England. I won't have this for France. I have no price series so I can't use this method. And the building index is bust because I could find no data for the 14th century for France. Wiki has more than a hundred events, but none of them are in France. Sheesh. Even in the 12th century where I have buidling events (though less than I have for England) there is no finer structure than a single peak in the 1130's. So no economic turnings. Unless I can find some other objective measure, one would have to prceed solely with politics and I already know that doesn't work. So I think France may be imposible to do, at least with the methodology available to me.

Mikebert, I've been faithfully following your British turnings. Have ever since you posted the thread.

The reason I asked about Butlerian spirals via PM was because I didn't know if there was some great book you'd read and I hadn't (if it had I would've bought it) and I wasn't as familiar with the concept though I thought I had a general grasp of it--but I wanted to be sure.

As for the explanations of your choice for 2008, thank you I've been looking for this for a while.

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Chas'88

The reason I asked about Butlerian spirals via PM was because I didn't know if there was some great book you'd read and I hadn't (if it had I would've bought it) and I wasn't as familiar with the concept though I thought I had a general grasp of it--but I wanted to be sure.

I get a lot of ideas from posters here. Most of them, in fact (I'm not very creative, but I am a good synthesizer). Bob Butler provided the spiral concept, which I use to replace the unrest period since there is insufficient data with which to determine unrest periods before the Plague.

To use this I need a detailed timeline of political events. I used to try to find a pre-existing timeline, but none of them are fine-grained enough. I got the solution to this problem from you. You gave me the idea of looking at turnings as a series of acts in a play, where the people of the time play their roles, you know the "all the world's a stage". So I find a a major player typically the king and look up his wiki bio. In that bio these are events listed which go into the timeline. There are also people mentioned who have links to their bios. Click on them and you get more events for the timeline. Sometims things happen that have links and these provide more events. You also start to see the Kevin Bacon degress of association thing going one. There will be clusters of interlnked people like St. Dunstan, St. Aethelwold and a third guy I can't recall. What these guys have in common helps define one of the spirals for the 10th century crisis.

After a while you can see the various threads going one invovling different sets of people, but with interlinks between the groups. You finally build a sufficiently dense timeline that you can split into specific spirals and get spiral dates from them.

From Marc Lamb I got the idea of making politics instead of economics central. I was very resistant to this idea, and could not see his suppoedly 40 year political cycles. Now I do. So I take his political emphasis combined with a character-centric approach to obtaining historical facts and Bob Butler's method of organizing them into spirals to produce "political turnings" than can be averaged with other kinds to obtain consensus turnings.

To do generations I needed a concept for why generational length should be around 26 years long in earlier times, but shorter today (despite longer lives). I got that from Kurt Horner. And so on.

One of the questions I have about your Terrorism spiral is that I shared that observation with some friends privately and they thought that with the Boston bombings and the "high terror alert" in the Middle east prompting the withdrawal of embassy people that the terrorism spiral was far from finished. Thoughts?

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Mikebert

France is going to be very messy politically. I don't think there will be nicely separated clear-cut spirals that can allow one to establish solid turnings that can be used to production generational turnings for the adjacent periods. This would not be a problem if I had an "anchor" timeline like that provied by the economic turnings in England. I won't have this for France. I have no price series so I can't use this method. And the building index is bust because I could find no data for the 14th century for France. Wiki has more than a hundred events, but none of them are in France. Sheesh. Even in the 12th century where I have buidling events (though less than I have for England) there is no finer structure than a single peak in the 1130's. So no economic turnings. Unless I can find some other objective measure, one would have to prceed solely with politics and I already know that doesn't work. So I think France may be imposible to do, at least with the methodology available to me.

The reason I think you'll like the artistic data I'm cranking out is because a lot of it focuses on France/Burgundy.

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Chas'88

I'm going off the impressions I was left with by the series to be honest.

And while I was doing that ASB'65 and myself roughly mapped out the Jewish saeculum as we saw it (liable to change as she's now reading that new Zealot book):

Kingdom of Judea

20 BC - 6 AD = 1T

Famine ends in Judea, Herod the Great starts rebuilding the Second Temple and a bunch of other building projects, By 14 BC Judea had become a prosperous kingdom, Second Temple is finished in 10 BC re-establishing the Pharisees' place in society.

Herod the Great is proclaimed as "King of the Jews" but he also goes out of his way to establish himself as the ruler of non-Jews in Judea by building Greek and Roman temples. Grecco-Roman population and influence in Judea grows during his reign.

Herod the Great eventually dies, but had had disputes with his sons so he kept changing his will to determine who would succeed him. When he dies his sons appeal to Rome to decide, Rome splits the kingdom into three parts each ruled by a different son (as per one of Herod's wills) but gets rid of the position of "King of the Jews". A fourth part is also included and given to Philip the Tetrarch, but his lands are eventually incorporated into Syria.

~*~*~

6 AD - 41 AD = 2T

The increase in Grecco-Roman influence begins to upset the Jews. They think it's gone to far when a census is called for in 6 AD. Suddenly a new group is formed called the "Zealots". They are a religious based group who think that the only ruler of Judea should be God. Other splinter groups start popping up as well such as the Sadducees and the Essenes. Rebellions continue to occur under Emperor Tiberius against his right hand man Sejanus. Around 27 AD John the Baptist starts his ministries, and about that time Jesus (as he is called by the Greek members of Judea) does as well. Sometime in the early 30s Paul has his conversion and then goes out to spread the word. Continued discontent over Grecco-Roman influence grows until it comes to a head with the "Crisis under Caligula" (37 - 41 AD). Some Jews in other Roman provinces (notably the bread basket of Egypt) as well as Jerusalem had been rebelling. In response Caligula built a statue of himself inside the Jewish temple. It should be noted that Caligula for a time also considered himself the "Messiah" of the Jews, but then he also considered himself the living Jove. Caligula also gives Herod Agrippa the title of King of the Jews and ends the Tetrarchy. Caligula's statue causes a full fledge rebellion. The crisis ends when Herod Agrippa manages to convince Caligua to have the statue removed for the sake of law and order which ends the rebellion.

41 AD - 66 AD = 3T

More people claiming to be Messiah figures begin to pop up. Even Herod Agrippa tries proclaiming himself as the Messiah before dying five days later. Herod had done it as part of a plot to take the Eastern half of the Roman Empire away from Claudius--who had interestingly enough also been a friend of his. It should be noted that Jews viewed Agrippa favorably while Jewish-Christians did not. Priests start dividing themselves into smaller and smaller factions. Mostly though the Romans leave the Judeans alone as Rome is involved in its own Crisis problems and this is a quiet time.

66 AD - 92 AD = 4T

Nero introduces the "Imperial Cult" to Judea, thus begins the Great Jewish Revolt which results in the destruction of Herod's Second Temple in 70--which was after Rome's Crisis had ended so they could respond "extra hard". The extermination of many Jews in Judea, and the establishment of the Jewish diaspora also comes from this "extra hard response". In 92 Arippa II dies and the Herodian dynasty ends, and Iudea is incorporated as a full-fledge province of Rome.

Key Characters:

Herod the Great: Civic
Herod Archelaus: Artist
Philip I: Artist
Herod Antipas: Artist/Prophet
Herodias: Prophet
Herod Agrippa I aka Agrippa the Great: Prophet
Herod Chalcis: Prophet???
Judas of Galilee: Prophet
Paul: Prophet/Nomad
John, the Baptist: Prophet/Nomad
Jesus: Prophet/Nomad
Philip II: Nomad
Salome: Nomad
Herod Agrippa II: Nomad

And after doing that, suddenly the "Roman response" to the "Jewish problem" made sense. Rome was a turning ahead of Judea at the time, so when Rome got out of its own Crisis issues with the beginning of the next dynasty it was able to put down the rebellions in Iudea with a bit of extra oomph.

~Chas'88

Oh, very good work!

Originally Posted by Chas'88

The reason I think you'll like the artistic data I'm cranking out is because a lot of it focuses on France/Burgundy.

~Chas'88

Knew you were one of the Writers.

Originally Posted by Chas'88

I'm going off the impressions I was left with by the series to be honest.

And while I was doing that ASB'65 and myself roughly mapped out the Jewish saeculum as we saw it (liable to change as she's now reading that new Zealot book):

Kingdom of Judea

20 BC - 6 AD = 1T

Famine ends in Judea, Herod the Great starts rebuilding the Second Temple and a bunch of other building projects, By 14 BC Judea had become a prosperous kingdom, Second Temple is finished in 10 BC re-establishing the Pharisees' place in society.

Herod the Great is proclaimed as "King of the Jews" but he also goes out of his way to establish himself as the ruler of non-Jews in Judea by building Greek and Roman temples. Grecco-Roman population and influence in Judea grows during his reign.

Herod the Great eventually dies, but had had disputes with his sons so he kept changing his will to determine who would succeed him. When he dies his sons appeal to Rome to decide, Rome splits the kingdom into three parts each ruled by a different son (as per one of Herod's wills) but gets rid of the position of "King of the Jews". A fourth part is also included and given to Philip the Tetrarch, but his lands are eventually incorporated into Syria.

~*~*~

6 AD - 41 AD = 2T

The increase in Grecco-Roman influence begins to upset the Jews. They think it's gone to far when a census is called for in 6 AD. Suddenly a new group is formed called the "Zealots". They are a religious based group who think that the only ruler of Judea should be God. Other splinter groups start popping up as well such as the Sadducees and the Essenes. Rebellions continue to occur under Emperor Tiberius against his right hand man Sejanus. Around 27 AD John the Baptist starts his ministries, and about that time Jesus (as he is called by the Greek members of Judea) does as well. Sometime in the early 30s Paul has his conversion and then goes out to spread the word. Continued discontent over Grecco-Roman influence grows until it comes to a head with the "Crisis under Caligula" (37 - 41 AD). Some Jews in other Roman provinces (notably the bread basket of Egypt) as well as Jerusalem had been rebelling. In response Caligula built a statue of himself inside the Jewish temple. It should be noted that Caligula for a time also considered himself the "Messiah" of the Jews, but then he also considered himself the living Jove. Caligula also gives Herod Agrippa the title of King of the Jews and ends the Tetrarchy. Caligula's statue causes a full fledge rebellion. The crisis ends when Herod Agrippa manages to convince Caligua to have the statue removed for the sake of law and order which ends the rebellion.

41 AD - 66 AD = 3T

More people claiming to be Messiah figures begin to pop up. Even Herod Agrippa tries proclaiming himself as the Messiah before dying five days later. Herod had done it as part of a plot to take the Eastern half of the Roman Empire away from Claudius--who had interestingly enough also been a friend of his. It should be noted that Jews viewed Agrippa favorably while Jewish-Christians did not. Priests start dividing themselves into smaller and smaller factions. Mostly though the Romans leave the Judeans alone as Rome is involved in its own Crisis problems and this is a quiet time.

66 AD - 92 AD = 4T

Nero introduces the "Imperial Cult" to Judea, thus begins the Great Jewish Revolt which results in the destruction of Herod's Second Temple in 70--which was after Rome's Crisis had ended so they could respond "extra hard". The extermination of many Jews in Judea, and the establishment of the Jewish diaspora also comes from this "extra hard response". In 92 Arippa II dies and the Herodian dynasty ends, and Iudea is incorporated as a full-fledge province of Rome.

Key Characters:

Herod the Great: Civic
Herod Archelaus: Artist
Philip I: Artist
Herod Antipas: Artist/Prophet
Herodias: Prophet
Herod Agrippa I aka Agrippa the Great: Prophet
Herod Chalcis: Prophet???
Judas of Galilee: Prophet
Paul: Prophet/Nomad
John, the Baptist: Prophet/Nomad
Jesus: Prophet/Nomad
Philip II: Nomad
Salome: Nomad
Herod Agrippa II: Nomad

And after doing that, suddenly the "Roman response" to the "Jewish problem" made sense. Rome was a turning ahead of Judea at the time, so when Rome got out of its own Crisis issues with the beginning of the next dynasty it was able to put down the rebellions in Iudea with a bit of extra oomph.

~Chas'88

Jesus is a Joneser!

Originally Posted by Chas'88

The reason I think you'll like the artistic data I'm cranking out is because a lot of it focuses on France/Burgundy.

~Chas'88

Oh good. I was hoping that maybe I could get a cutural timeline that would be analyzed in some way to reveal turning-type periods objectively. There are also religious devleopments, new orders, heresies and the like that appear much more frequenctly in France than in England.

Right now I am searching the net for medieval price series that deal with France and adjoining regions. I found a source with wheat prices for dozens of towns. I've looked at a half a dozen or so, but so far none of them go back before 1431. I did find a graph of coin hoard data that shows periods of high stress (more hoarding) in France in the 1180-1215 and 1350-80 periods. The first period contians the start of the Mendicant movements brakced by the Waldensians 1170's and the Dominicans founded 1215, so it is a possible Awakening candidate. THe latter period I have already worked up as a Crisis.

I also will continue with the building index. The combination of Italy and France does show some fluctuations. If I can establish similar timelines for those two regions I can use the combined series.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

Oh good. I was hoping that maybe I could get a cutural timeline that would be analyzed in some way to reveal turning-type periods objectively. There are also religious devleopments, new orders, heresies and the like that appear much more frequenctly in France than in England.

Right now I am searching the net for medieval price series that deal with France and adjoining regions. I found a source with wheat prices for dozens of towns. I've looked at a half a dozen or so, but so far none of them go back before 1431. I did find a graph of coin hoard data that shows periods of high stress (more hoarding) in France in the 1180-1215 and 1350-80 periods. The first period contians the start of the Mendicant movements brakced by the Waldensians 1170's and the Dominicans founded 1215, so it is a possible Awakening candidate. THe latter period I have already worked up as a Crisis.

I also will continue with the building index. The combination of Italy and France does show some fluctuations. If I can establish similar timelines for those two regions I can use the combined series.

The composer database I've been looking at suggest that France and Italy are connected but there's a bit of a delay with France being the trend setter culturally speaking and the Italians imitating them after a bit of a delay.

I'm starting to think that the composer/artistic data suggests new "forms" of art being discovered in one turning in a saeculum and they then continue to exist until that same turning comes back around in the next saeculum. There might be permutations and splinter groups that occur off of that general style within that saeculum in which the principles might be taken more to the "X-treme", but the general aesthetics remain the same until the next time the aesthetic values get "reset". Thus movements track when a general set of "shared aesthetic values" are held by a group of composers and when they come in and out of fashion. Why they come in and out of fashion I think we can explain in a generational manner. Since I'm still in the Medieval period (as I'm trying to exhaust nearly every composer I can get to get as a wide net as I can) here's a particular one I noticed:

Ars Nova: 1310 - 1377 & Ars Subtilior: 1370 - 1410 (Ars Subtilior is a kind of break off in part due to the Avignon Pope, and you can really describe it more as Ars Nova X-treme)

Trencento (aka Italian Ars Nova) - 1330 - 1420

So there's a slight delay but nothing too out of the ordinary in countries that are generally linked together. It should be noted that a lot of Italian families would patronize French/Burgundian musicians on the make, and that's usually how the musical exchange occurred. A lot of times the French/Burgundian musicians would work for a short time in Italy and then go back after securing a position back home with the King of France or Duke of Burgundy that made them semi-independent, others would make a career out of playing for the Popes & rich Italian families. Also the Pope liked to have the most "in" music of the day as well, which meant bringing in French composers--and the Avignon Pope wanted something even more "in" and "exclusive" culturally speaking. Mostly though the expectation in the 1300s was that the French/Burgundian courts toured Italy inspiring the Italians to form their own different but related style or the musicians put their time in in Italy before going on to make it big elsewhere.

The funny thing was was that the new style that would sweep Burgundy (and then France) in the 1400s would be due in part to one Englishman (John Dunstable) who was noted for establishing the "English Countenance" which inspired the Burgundian School (and be the establishment of the Franco-Flemish School of composers for the next 200 years) of composers during the English-Burgundy alliance in the early 1400s during the Hundred Years War. And because of this rough system of cultural sharing in the 1300s, the 1400s marked the first time there was an International movement of composing with the Italians taking composers of the Franco-Flemish School, outright importing and keeping them in Italy completely skipping the whole "inspire our local artists" phase.

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Chas'88

I'm starting to think that the composer/artistic data suggests new "forms" of art being discovered in one turning in a saeculum and they then continue to exist until that same turning comes back around in the next saeculum.

I’ve thought this too. And it gave me an idea, but I lack the background to do it myself. I was thinking are artistic developments/movement similar to economic innovations? Innovations tend to show an S-shaped growth curve. See this article.



I have traced these growth curves over time




http://irows.ucr.edu/papers/irows9/image006.gif

It might be possible to obtain similar “waves” of artistic development over time as I did with the economic innovations.

Here's an example of what I am talking about. Here's a guy who has put together a database of churches with rib vaults. He has personally visited all 384 churches in the database. I took his data, sorted it by date and put the number of entries by year into a timeline. I then obtained a cumulative sum of events and dividing it by the total number of events to obtain a growth curve for the ribbed arch innovation. Here is the result:

Year % of observations
1080 0.3
1090 1.6
1100 2.9
1110 5.6
1120 13.4
1130 43.4
1140 92.2
1150 100.0

10% of the entries fall in the 1180-1119 period. This would be the “innovation period” if I were analyzing an economic innovation (see the S-curve for the auto in the article I cited). The last 10% fell after 1140. The “growth phase”, when 80% of the observations occurred, fell into the 1119-1140 period. For a cultural innovation I might call the innovation stage the "intriguing" period, the growth phase the "this is cool" phase and the maturity phase as the "old hat" or the "been there done that" phase. One might expect a new round of innovation to spring off the exhaustion typified by the "old hat" phase.

In principle, one could do this sort of analysis give databases like this ribbed arch one and construct S-curves from them. If they are like the innovations I studied, they will fall into clusters spaced a characteristic period apart that may be correlated with the saeculum. Hopefully this will clarify what I was talking about.

Perfectly. That's why I am noting the years particular composers were active or began contributing.

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Chas'88

Perfectly. That's why I am noting the years particular composers were active or began contributing.

~Chas'88

Cool beans
I know your area of study is theater. But you are doing music here. Do you have musical training or play an instrument? I don’t, but my wife (a Chem E like me) also plays three instruments and has considerable musical chops (can sight read very well and transpose on the fly). This week she is at chamber music for fun camp. So I’m batching it, and right now am at the bar having a few brews.
Anyways. Can you do the visual arts too? When I was researching the building index I encountered plenty of information about architecture and artwork, but did not know what to do with it. It then occurred to me that rather than build my own database, I’ll bet it’s been done. A few Google searches gave me the ribbed vault database. Someone who knows what they are doing can probably find more data than I can.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

Cool beans
I know your area of study is theater. But you are doing music here. Do you have musical training or play an instrument?

I was a double major in college with Music and Theater. I've played Piano since 1st grade, Cello since 3rd, and I played Trombone for two years starting in 5th grade before dropping it due to over-extending myself. So I "got music". I'm not a huge music nerd, but I have a strong enough background in it to understand it. Plus my BA to fall back on.

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Chas'88

... but I have a strong enough background in it to understand it...
~Chas'88

Yeah you do! Awhile back I asked about a post you made that was an analysis of what was
(and wasn't) "Classical Music"; It was excellent, IMO. If you ever remember where it's located
on this MB, I'd sure be interested in knowing.


Prince

Originally Posted by princeofcats67

Yeah you do! Awhile back I asked about a post you made that was an analysis of what was
(and wasn't) "Classical Music"; It was excellent, IMO. If you ever remember where it's located
on this MB, I'd sure be interested in knowing.


Prince

Damn, I've forgotten about it... I'll find it one day, I'm sure. Thanks for the memory!

~Chas'88

I found a documentary series on YouTube that ought to help Mikebert with earlier periods than the 900s for getting an idea of English life/turnings in Saxon England.

Part One:



~Chas'88

~Chas'88

Part Two:



~Chas'88

There are more parts, but I think the above videos cover the parts of history Mikebert hasn't checked out yet.

~Chas'88

More documentaries on Alfred the Great and his descendants!

This one is mostly devoted to Alfred's daughter: Athelfled, the Lady of the Mercians.



~Chas'88