Bill Pirkle asks:

>Is it true to say that all music was avant-garde at one time? Especially
>major genres.  If so, then why would we even consider rejecting it today.
>Does is not have a chance of being the classical music of the future?

I'm not sure, but I don't believe it *is* true.  The concept of the
avant-garde seems a very modern one, at least post-Beethoven.  As I
understand it, the avant-garde believes at least some of the following:

1.  There is an historical progress to art.  Some special souls intuit
that progress and write "music of the future." This is, of course, a
contradiction in terms.

2.  The souls have to be special, since ordinary folk don't have this
intuition.  This creates an opposition between angels and clods.  Clods
can't appreciate the music of angels.  Therefore, angels speak only to
angels or to those "but a little lower than." If you can't be an angel
yourself, strive to become "a little lower than."

3.  The only people worth talking to are the divine company.  Everybody
else is too stupid, too corrupt, and way too comfortable.  You can do
very little about the first two, so direct your energy against the third.

How does this differ from, say, Beethoven and before? Earlier, I believe,
people did distinguish "connoisseurs" and music for "connoisseurs."
Mozart's "Haydn" quartets had a different audience than his serenades and
divertimenti, for example.  However, I don't believe either Beethoven or
Mozart would have scorned popular success (Mozart's fizzy letters on the
reception of "Figaro" in Prague, for example) or, for that matter, would
have worried about whether they were ahead of their time or merely of it.
They would have recognized that different people liked different things,
that a piece of music should suit its venue, including its social venue
(you don't play a Mass at a party, for example), and that while they may
have hoped for a survival of their work into the future, as far as I know
they made no claim to know the future.  By the way, nothing dates quite so
fast as most music of the future.  Also, I believe it would have surprised
both Mozart and Beethoven to find music written in a consciously archaic
style.  In special circumstances, both composers do try to incorporate
"archaic" elements as an effect, but not to bring back the past wholesale
as anything but an artifact.  I believe this comes in as a feature of
Romantic and 19th-century historical scholarship, but I'm not sure.

Steve Schwartz