In matters affecting the future of high culture, it is often difficult to tell the friends of art from its enemies. Art is a shibboleth, an unexamined good in whose service—and in the solving of whose problems—many can prosper. Whether what is good for art’s advocates is in fact also good for art is a murky matter.

These days, the attention of the well-wishers of art is beginning to fasten on the plight of serious music. There are many elements in this plight: a decline in audience sophistication, at once caused by and resulting in an increased concentration on already-known and crowd-pleasing repertory; the complete failure over the past half century of avant-garde composition, both acoustic and electronic, to win a place in the minds of musicians and in the ears of serious music-lovers; the almost total loss of confidence in the idea that the writing of music is a craft requiring...

 

New to The New Criterion?

Subscribe for one year to receive ten print issues, and gain immediate access to our online archive spanning more than four decades of art and cultural criticism.

Popular Right Now