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Entry: The Death of Music by the Spirit of Government Subsidies Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_death_of_music_from_the_spirit_of_government_subsidies#15436 Post contents: I believe that if we step back from classifying music as “classical” vs. all-the-rest-of-music then many difficulties are removed. We should just acknowledge music as a creative art that has existed for a very long time and undergoes constant change. Every generation has a number of people who are compelled to express themselves creatively through music, and in every generation some small set of these people does it very well, and with them lies the musical-historical moment. In the 19th and early 20th century these music-creation experts tended to prefer expressing themselves via orchestras. Then in the mid-20th century it seems the government and academia decided to extend the age of the orchestra artificially; music performed by an orchestra has a veneer of respectability and seriousness, and a bureaucrat providing a grant for such music would be taking less of a risk of backing the wrong kind of art. But I believe that fine music-creation continues today, and it just has bypassed the genre that might be called “classical.” As an example, Radiohead’s album In Rainbows from last October is as fine as any composed music I have heard (and yes, I have heard tons of classical music; my undergraduate degree was in music history/theory). Perhaps that was the latest moment in music history. Sent at: 2008 07 09