[MichailP]

I never quite understood why music went this way. My take is that, as always, musicians had to have some kind of sponsorship, and it slowly shifted from musician being sponsored by noble family (for example Liszt and Esterhazy) to getting a stipend from some institutions board (for example Arnold Schoenberg who worked as a bank clerk and got his first stipend through intervention of friends). That is why nowadays you get much more quality from say jazz than you get from classically trained composers.

[cschmidt]

There is good, quality classical still being written today. Try John Adams, for example. His website is

www.earbox.com

My favorite piece of his is Harmonielehre, but there is lots of great stuff there.

[scrozier]

+1 for John Adams. Or Steve Reich. Or Phillip Glass. Or Morton Lauridsen.

[cschmidt]

Morton Lauridsen was new to me. I just downloaded an album from iTunes - O Nata Lux is fantastic. Kind of funny to get classical tips on HN :-).

[MichailP]

Thanks for the link. I also like minimalism, I can say that it is my favorite style in modern classical music. Found this little clip while I was preparing my music history exams few years ago, it really explains Philip Glass nicely :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNiOqa1nWgI

[ubernostrum]

So, some things happened in the twentieth century. Basically there are two trends that developed, and reinforced each other without necessarily intending to.

One was the disengagement of general audiences from "classical" (for lack of a better term) music. The other was the disengagement of composers from general audiences.

Each group did this, largely for its own reasons, but each side's disengagement only sped up the other's. The result of this is that you have a general audience who is largely ignorant of what was going on in music, and a world of composers who became more and more insular, writing largely for each other and to make increasingly-arcane points about music theory.

This means that when you listen to contemporary classical music, you're A) listening to something that was not written with you in mind as an audience, and B) utterly lacking the background -- the traditions, the movements, the reactions and counter-reactions -- to understand what's going on in the music.

In a broader sense, this happened in basically all the arts, but music is one of the areas where we seem to notice it more often.

[coldtea]

>That is why nowadays you get much more quality from say jazz than you get from classically trained composers.

Define quality.

If you mean "you get much more to stomp your feet in the beat to", then OK.

[colomon]

In my mind the interesting/curious transition is from music that "anybody" can play to music that requires the very very best players in the world. (I mean seriously, if the Kronos Quartet can't handle playing your string quartet...)

I mean, I'm a fair amateur bassoon and piano player. I've played bassoon on four Beethoven symphonies over the years, and technically they were easily within my grasp. His piano sonatas push me, but back when I was actively playing piano I could make them sound like music.

I've played some more modern music which was much harder, and while I quite like some of it, I sure don't think it was "better" than Beethoven.

I think the exact same thing has happened to jazz, too, it's just a few decades behind "classical" music in the transition...

[Tycho]

I suppose in the recording and mass-distribution age, it makes sense to maximise for player ability (assuming it's worthwhile) if you only need one performance to make the piece immortal.