Bill Pirkle asks:

>Is it true to say that all music was avant-garde at one time?

Not exactly.  It is true that styles have succeeded styles, with excitement
and resistance along the way, for a very long time.  But the avant-garde,
as a conscious, deliberate movement in the arts, had a history of about
a hundred years, from about 1870-1970, give or take a few years.  I don't
think it is too strong to say that the avant-garde tended to want, not
only to leave old styles behind, but to stamp them out, and to scorn the
"bourgeois" taste of those wishing to continue to appreciate "superseded"
styles.

Jim Tobin