Scott Wilson asks:

>So how about it?  Is there anything necessary or valuable about the new?

No, but there's not anything necessary or valuable about the old either.
I guess I quarrel with the terms "necessary or valuable." One person's
"necessary" is another's "live without."

>Is there a need to constantly reinvent music, or is recycling and/or
>recombination (as often seems to happen in all the above-mentioned genres)
>enough?

Again, it depends on whose need.  A composer may need to change what
he's doing, just to stay interested, if nothing else.  On the other hand,
at least some listeners are quite satisfied with Mozart and before.

>Is a repertoire of great classics somehow eternal and universal,
>or do we need music from our time as well.

Absolutely not, as any reading of musical history shows.  Most music
lovers got along very well without Bach for a number of years.  Certain
composers go in and out of regard all the time: Tchaikovsky, Puccini,
Verdi, Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, Mahler, Shostakovich, Britten, and
so on.

Do we need music from our time?  Again, whose need are we talking about?
The joy of new music is the joy and the risk of discovery.  If you have
no desire to risk anything, you'll probably stay away from the unfamiliar
or the currently unheralded.

I find it, however, curious that this idea of "everything good's already
been written" is applied to classical music only.  I've not heard anybody
outside of academic departments (where art is primarily a job and learning
something new complicates the job) say that "all the good literature's
already been written" or "all the good paintings have already been
painted." The attitude is more prevalent by far among music lovers.
And among educated classical-music non-lovers, the attitude is that
no classical music matters, really the same attitude only more widely
applied.  People who'd be embarrassed not to have read the latest Doctorow,
Pyncheon, or De Lillo work have no such shame when they have to admit
they've not heard a particular work by Beethoven, Mahler, or (to take
one example from living composers) Lees.  Furthermore, they've no spur
to actually "fill in the gap."

>I realize that 'new music' may be something that list members are not
>interested in, but if that's the case, tell me why not.  Explain why
>classical music (or any other kind of music) fills your needs.

I need it in the same way I need to read a book.  It stimulates thought,
not just about music and musical culture, but about humanity in general.
Thinking is enjoyable.  I should add that I don't need just classical
music.  Lots of different kinds of music does this for me.  I feel
something great is waiting around the corner -- a jazz performer I haven't
heard, a new pop (in the broadest sense of the term) song, the music of
a culture previously unknown to me.  I may have to wade through an awful
lot of dreck to get to it, but to me it's worth the wade.

Steve Schwartz