[Tycho]

Personally I think it's a real shame that many advanced musicians focus on making 'interesting' music and seem to turn their noses up at merely 'enjoyable' music. It's corrupted entire genres like classical and jazz (Radiohead even managed to almost do it to rock).

[Anchor]

The same argument is made for contemporary architecture by Christopher Alexander: almost everyone focuses on creating something novel instead of structures of lasting value and source of, well, goodness. Alexander called this quality 'life'.

I think it is a sad state of affairs that it is indeed so in the modern world.

It is also interesting that it happens in so many distinct areas. Perhaps it is a property of the society and how it is structured today. It is of course rare for a community of nonprofessionals to be able to build a complete modern house. Why this affects musicians too, is not clear to me. The rise of individualism maybe?

[scrozier]

John Adams (living composer) has said of a certain period of musical composition (the period when I was studying the subject in college; the late 70s) that "we forgot that music was supposed to sound good."