>In 1955, music critic Henry Pleasants published the hotly debated book "The Agony of Modern Music" in which he put forth the argument that the European symphonic tradition and classical music over the course of the 20th century had ossified and become creatively bankrupt and unlistenable. He argued that jazz was the new classical music and spoke to the needs of modern listeners. "Serious music is a dead art. The vein which for 300 years offered a seemingly inexhaustible yield of beautiful music has run out. What we know as modern music is the noise made by deluded speculators picking through its slag pile." He further developed this critique of contemporary music in Death of a Music?: The Decline of the European Tradition and the Rise of Jazz (1961) and Serious Music and All That Jazz (1969).
Thank God nobody's written a book since then claiming hip-hop is the new classical music.
Is this reverse psychology OP? What are you suggesting?
Easton Morales
I mean, it's not wrong. Classical gradually forgot catchy melodies and became more and more experimental and atonal until nobody wanted to listen to it anymore.
Logan Allen
^This and fuck Schoenberg.
Justin Williams
I'm a classical pleb. Schoenberg's music has been copy and pasted into Star Wars and keeping that in mind is probably the last popular music in the classical vein. How did he kill classical? Legit question.
Cooper Smith
The music criticism equivalent of those boomer political cartoons making fun of smartphones and Pokemon Go.
Ayden Wood
He didn’t, the guy you responded to is an idiot. Classical is dead, just like jazz is dead. People don’t listen to it, but it’s not the fault of the composers and musicians. Schoenberg took the only logical step forward when he invented the 12-tone method and composed plenty of beautiful music using it. People like the guy you responded to pretend to sound smart by dismissing all “modern art” with a wave of their hand, without having ever really bothered to engage with it. It’s just another form of the le wrong generation meme.
Jonathan Bell
Just like metal post-80s. Forget having catchy anthems like Breaking The Law, instead it devolved into unlistenable noise like grindcore.
Jeremiah Wright
Yeah because maybe the creative possibilities offered by catchy anthems were exhausted
Sebastian Bailey
Oh great, another OLD GOOD NEW BAD kinda guy. How original...
