Ed Beach:

>IMO, there is very little good music being written today or in the past 20
>years and the "old" stuff loses it's attraction to the younger generation.
>I know many of you like what is being written today...but you are not the
>average listener.  As an old boy, I hang onto my brethren....they are
>comfortable and familiar.

I have no qualms about those who hang on to their familiar musical brethren
-- even if it's at the root of the labels' and stores' overattention to CM
from yesteryear, so much of which bores me no end.  Is that the stuff for
this "average listener" you speak about? I've never met one.

Do hang on to the comfortable and familiar: no law says you must explore
further.  But know that any apparent scarcity of good contemp.  music will
be a function of this not looking.  I wonder how else one might understand
it: the gene pool weakened?  ...the muses vanished?  ...talent for CM at
a certain point petered out?

Let's skip by some demographic speculations about our overpopulated times:
the massive numbers of leisured, well-educated people alive today (probably
more than have existed until this time, *cumulatively*), the proportion of
those who'd be interested in CM, the fragment of these who'd be able to
compose, the few among them who'd compose well and get recorded, etc.
Zero? Not likely.  Instead, let me just point to my recent experience:

Around January, I gained access to a music library that's well stocked
with, of all things, contemporary Norwegian music.  Now that's a tiny
country (4.5m pop), but even so I've run into at least half a dozen
intriguing composers ...several of them very impressive.  With due respect
to Norwegians for my prejudice: Who'd've thought?!

Well, yes: Nordheim, Norholm, Janson, Kvandal, Hvoslef, Saeverud (of
course), Bibalo ...and more recently Persen, Soderlind, Sommerfeldt,
and Thommessen.  I'm still checking out those two Esses, but Olav Anton
Thommessen is a big talent, and in his 50s.  At least eight of these
composers have nothing whatever to apologize about.

In short, I'd say it's down to our hunger, and not to any dearth of quality
out there: there's lots of enjoyable, well-crafted music being produced as
we write these notes, and no doubt in time much of it will come to
widespread attention.

Bert Bailey -- another old boy (well, turning 50 in a month: on the great
Miklos Rozsa's birthday)