Janos Gereben:

>But David Diamond's 1944 "Rounds for Orchestra" sounded thoroughly
>pleasant and in the mainstream...

Yes.  But, if it is of any interest, this is the work that suddenly and
explosively got my brother excited about classical music, as a young
teenager in the mid '50's, when he heard it by chance on the radio one
morning.  Beethoven had never done anything for him, but I recall him
saying that "Rounds" "made his cheeks puff out." From there he went to
the other American neoclassical and neoromantic, European neoclassical
and serial music, all of which he then introduced to me.

In response to Janos' main question, "modernism" is probably going to
take a long rest, as an ongoing movement, because no new style is going
to shock or startle informed audiences for a while.  What the 20th Century
has shown is, not that everything has been tried, but that everything is
possible, "all is permitted" in the arts.  The challenge for composers now
is to produce work that is new and fresh to the ears of the audience for
it, whatever that takes.  What it will take, I think, will prove to be
simply the distinctive voices of inventive composers who are true to
themselves; as well as some combination of native talent or genius, hard
work, and good fortune, with all that that implies.  I expect that there
will be plenty of music that will be new, interesting and exciting in the
21st century.

Jim Tobin