Black Swans and Many Worlds are new models to help explain musical
structures, and by extension, events in the social environment and in
internal human experience. Many Worlds takes its departure point from quantum
physics, and especially the work of Hugh Everett III, who used the defining
point of a measurement in the sub-atomic world as initiating alternative
courses of action. Everett extrapolated this idea to the macro-world: a
defining point may initiate multiple outcomes, each with its own character
and events, as parallel worlds. One application of this model is to consider
musical works within a genre as Many Worlds. Black Swans derive from Nassim
Taleb, who proposes that social, political, and in fact all aspects of
today?s world are not understandable by logical processes or incremental
change but are often rocked by extreme, unpredictable shocks. If Many Worlds
provide new ways of thinking about potentiality, probability and innovation,
Black Swans arrest us in our tracks by eruptions that threaten to derail
contemporary life, and with it, music, the arts and ideas.