Creativity Quote by Neville Marriner

Marriner is selling a long game in a culture addicted to instant canon. Coming from a conductor synonymous with polish and “standard repertoire” authority, the line is quietly radical: it reframes the avant-garde not as a fringe insurgency but as the next chapter in the same book. The phrase “continuum” does heavy lifting. It denies the comforting story that classical music has golden ages and then a long decline, or that innovation is a hostile takeover of tradition. Instead, history is presented as a conveyor belt: yesterday’s scandal becomes tomorrow’s subscription series.

The intent is partly pedagogical, partly political. Marriner is giving presenters, orchestras, and audiences an ethical alibi to take risks now. If the modernists are future classics, then programming them isn’t charity or trend-chasing; it’s due diligence. The “30 years” is savvy, too: specific enough to feel testable, long enough to outlast the tenure of most artistic administrators. It’s a timeline that asks for patience, not surrender.

Subtext: the so-called “standard repertoire” is not a neutral museum label but a curated product of institutions, pedagogy, and repeated performance. Marriner knows that familiarity is manufactured. The avant-garde’s biggest obstacle isn’t difficulty; it’s absence. Put the music in front of players and listeners often enough, and the ear acclimates, the fear drains out, and what once sounded like provocation starts to sound like vocabulary.

Context matters: late-20th-century classical music faced audience anxiety, funding pressure, and a widening gap between conservatory modernism and concert-hall conservatism. Marriner is trying to stitch that gap shut with a single, confident sentence.