Good article on the gradual "demise" of classical music. Many reasons could be cited for this but the author argues the main reason is :
.. the near-total inability of post-World War II America and Europe to produce more than a small number of classical works that any normal person would want to hear. That failure is slowly killing classical music. You can’t expect the public to remain engaged with works of the distant past if the present doesn’t produce anything interesting. Today’s concertgoers are not antiquaries; they, too, no less than music lovers in centuries gone by, want to enjoy and rave about the latest thing.
Maybe people who love classical music don't appreciate modernism. Its "classical" or a reason. If new music is produced that has the qualities of what old composers wrote and yet had certain novelty and sense of being in touch with the times, it is likely aficionados would enjoy it. Big events have come to pass even apart from the World Wars. Yet, they failed to inspire memorable music cast in the classical mold.
That is likely a problem statement too. At some point Rite of Spring became the way to convey the feeling of Spring as opposed to the Spring movement in The Four Seasons. For some the feelings, sounds, and sights of spring make for "real" music not the polyphonic texture with different instruments playing at the same time that is meant to invoke the sense of Spring
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