An observation about "Modern" classical music.

I think the atonal only stuff is not interesting to me. I don't mind if it's part of a song, but you need balance. And music should not be a test of your will. It should have pleasing qualities. Atonal works in songs that also have points of resolution throughout the song such as jazz and some modern music are enjoyable to me.

I enjoy modern classical music when done right. I guess it has just been a lack of effort on my part to seek it out. I would assume musical development will happen whether there is a big audience or not.

Robm321: hmmm....done right.....hmmm, what does that mean?An audience has nothing to do with it. Either music as art stands or falls on being autonomous. If it is a slave of fashion then it is not autonomous and therefore not art. In fact, there has been only one time in history that musical art and popularity coincided, the early 19th century. This also coincided with the rise of the middle class and its attitudes towards all art, the period of Beethoven(and only Beethoven)the first of the autonomous composers. And once the middle class made classical music...well... middle class, Classical music as art music had to become even more autonomous from the crudeness of the middle class. But it is more than alienation from the middle class, it had to do with what art itself sees, a metaphor for the human condition. If Beethoven was the voice of the rise of the middle class, then someone like Schnittke has to show the alienation of man in light of his conquering of nature itself through the processes developed in the Enlightenment. And boy can Schnittke show the aesthetics of alienation through his music.

I'm listening to Penderecki's Auschwitz Oratorio as we speak. This is as moving and as viscerally captivating (not to mention disturbing) as anything I've ever heard. Give it a try if you're ready for a very intense musical experience.

I'm not sure I agree with Schubertmaniac on the definition of art, but his assertion that modern music expresses as wide a range of emotion as any in history in right on. In fact, some would argue that with increasing harmonic complexity comes increasing ability to explore the nuances of the human condition. Sounds pretentious, but I think it's true in many cases.

I've been reading this thread for some time without commenting, until I saw this by Shubertmaniac:

My moniker says I love Schubert, and I do! But I would rank some of the moderns as my favorites too, but after Schubert, Beethoven and Brahms, I would go see a Schnitke, Gorecki, Bartok or Penderecki piece before I would see something like Mozart or Bruckner. These guys are inventive, imaginative and just plain aesthetically involving.

This is the first time I have read comments at Audiogon about Gorecki being heralded as a favorite. I am pleased to see I am not the only one who loves this music.

My absolute favorite is Symphony No.3 with Dawn Upshaw and the London Sinfonietta, have you heard this piece?

Shubertmaniac..."Inventive" is great, but the real skill is to be inventive within the structure of some rule set...in the case of music, melody, harmony, and rhythm. A random collection of notes, or some obscure musical algorithm, just does not turn me on. Maybe it does you.

By the way I'm sure you didn't mean to imply that Mozart was not inventive. He is most famous for ability to weave a simple theme into a tapestry of variations and developments.