History

Charles Shere has placed his prescient 1982 (!) essay, New Music in the United States, 1950-1980, online here.

The closing paragraph is stunningly accurate and could not be more current; it's almost a summary of recent blogospheric discussions. It begins:

All these different streams of music are capable of further development. None of them is likely to dominate the American music of the future. Like the other arts, music in America at the beginning of the 1980s is characterized by a tremendous plurality of points of view— and, on the forefront, especially among younger composer-performers, by a preference of results to theory, of artistic expression to artistic politics. Gamelans, rock fusion, music for conceptual theater, virtuoso performer music, collage, and the pursuit of exact intonation all flourish simultaneously, driven into modest surroundings by the continued indifference of government, the media, and the musical Establishment, but responding with growing resilience and tenacity.

Read the whole thing!