Jan Jarvlepp, in a mercifully dry look at the contrast between conventional
and modern music writes:

>a great artist such as Sibelius who was never radical by nature but,
>nevertheless, very innovative in his use of forms and orchestration?
>He found his own personal solution by earnestly trying to be modern
>in his Symphony No. 4 and then realizing that the path of deliberate
>self-conscious modernity was not for him.  Considering the wonderful
>symphonies that followed, we can be happy that he found his own personal
>solution to his struggle.  That has, however, earned his the derision of
>"progressives" such as Adorno.So what is progress anyway? What is the goal
>of progress and whose idea was it anyway?

I'm guessing that it was history's idea.  But this idea is too filigreed
to be reduced to a law that music, as such, progresses.  Rather, I'm
suggesting that it progresses only in the sense that its componennts
progress.  Arthur Sullivan wrote music of a kind that progressed to the
music of, say, Korngold, and Rozsa, and Williams.  Mozart wrote stuff
that progressed, though only slightly, to Hummel, and this genre of lofty
entertainment could be said, I daresay, then to have progressed through
Sibelius to, perhaps, Gershwin.  Offbeat music by Gesualdo could be said
to have progressed to Beethoven's late quartets and apotheosed with Henze.
Both offbeat music and the conventional forms of it have remained true to
their genres, while progressing.  But Offbeat has not progressed in the
favor of listeners, at least not notably.  Or?

Denis Fodor