I disagree with this notion that stupidity is a virtue in politics. If he's not intelligent enough to understand economic situations or scientific controversies on his own, then he must rely on his advisers to explain (dumb down) them to him. And who are these advisers? (only slightly a rhetorical question)

Sounds like the baby boomers finally found out how the internets work. ;)

I second that insight.

Welcome! ^^

Don't beat your self up about your liberal past too much, I'm sure you're not the only on here who went astray in their early days.

Read the descriptions, sounds fascinating! Particularly interesting that this scholarship seems to contradict Burke's claim that the General Assembly was composed of political know-nothings.

Just about to start reading Burke's Reflections myself (ordered off amazon). A reference to a good authoritative history of the french revolution would definitely be useful right about now.

I think you're conflating nihilism with materialism. The total reductionist philosophy employed by the nihilists doesn't hold much water with today's atheists, for good reason. The nihilists seem to ignore that  individuals can have their own implicit purposes.

The atheist must hold that emotions and intentions (human autonomy) rose out of nature. The theist believes that God endowed humans with those traits. Whichever you believe, once you acknowledge that humans have those, all philosophy and morality must follow.

Those words are pretty generalized though, they could also evem be used to describe Berg's Violin Concerto. One of the main goals of serialists is to present several of those emotions at once.

Also, I'd be curious to see how you guys feel about modern tonal compositions like the one I mentioned earlier (notations for orchestra). If it turns out people still dislike modern tonal music, then clearly this isn't about tonality.

Another interesting tidbit, modern composer aren't atonalists/twelve tonalists.

Somewhere between the late 70s-80s nearly all modern composers went back to composing tonal works. Boulez, Birtwistle, even Carter. They claimedt composing in twelve tone was too limiting, rather like trying to write a fugue or canon. For an example of a tonal piece of modern music, take a look at Boulez's Notations for Orchestra VII (which should be on youtube I think).

I don't think composers are deliberately trying to challenge audiences. They're just pursuing their philosophical view of music to it's logical conclusion. And orchestras interested in music theory play modern music in order to keep up with whats going on in the art. 

But I don't see any reason why new music would keep people away from the old.

Not necessarily. My own "credentials", besides listening to music and attempting (poorly) to play the piano, is one class in music appreciation, a few books, and some extended time reading the letters composers have written (Brahms being the most enjoyable ^^). So as far as musical knowledge goes I'd never claim to be more knowledgeable than anyone else :P.

But if you listen to compositions like Pierrot Lunaire long enough, you eventually become able to discern and separate the different "voices" in the music, and pick out various patterns in them. It's comparable to learning a new language.

I recall there was a study done somewhere in eastern europe where children were brought up listening to atonal music. The results were predictable, the children grew up finding it perfectly normal and most enjoyed it.

As for abstractness, without words isn't all music fairly abstract/subjective? What one experiences listening to music is entirely dependent on the listener. One chord may affect one person entirely different from another.

Oh god, as an Atheist(tm) I'm so embarrassed by this.

I'll just mention that this is old news. This thing got started years ago.

Again, this news is so humiliating. So rather accepting that this tars non-believers everywhere pretty badly, I'll just turn around and say "no u". :P Theists do it to and 2 wrongs make a right, or so I'm told. So bleh!

You're right in that there is a connection. However, you connected the wrong things :/. What you describe is something which the modern atonal (formerly atonal actually) composer Pierre Boulez laments about frequently, especially with regard to Mondrian's later works. Frauds producing minimalistic, unimaginative, meaningless art and trying to pass it as quality craftsmanship. 

Minimalism is the musical equivalent of the trend you describe in visual arts. There are a lot of fraudulent artists out there. But I think it's the people who try to pass off simple, minimalistic, meaningless art as high art who are the frauds, not the people who're actually trying to expand and innovate art.

A 5 year old could compose some of the things we see coming out of the minimalist camp. The same is not true of anything Stravinsky or Boulez wrote.

Well, one of the basic premises of the 2nd Viennese school was the idea that melody is only one aspect to music, and that in order to fully explore musical possibilities composers had to create a new system for organizing tones. The 1st of these systems was Schoenberg's twelve tone technique. All other aspects of music carry over into this new system. Dodecaphonic compositions even retain something quite similar to modulation.

The source of Bach & Stravinsky's genius wasn't simply the ability coming up with a catchy tunes. They explored the limits counterpoint and rhythm respectively. Modern music attempts to preserve that tradition. Composers are trying to constantly expand the amount of tones that can be played together. Then there's a strong trend among 20th century composers to make their works as contrapuntal as possible.

All of that may be difficult for 1st time listeners to absorb. But once you work things out, the music really does make sense.

Please do!

And soon! We need it :(.

Uh, no.

Have you ever listened to Berg's opera Lulu or Schoenberg's Moses und Arron? Both works reach the highest standard of beauty and expressionism. Your faulty characterization of 20th century art music is appalling. Stravinsky's Flood reaches the highest standard of christian expression.

Young people refuse to listen to classical music because they don't know anything about it, and thus fall victim to cultural cliches of it. Also, you can't dance to it. The primary role of popular music is cultural, the more you know about pop music the better odds you have of seeming hip at the club and maybe getting lucky.

Classical music is great, but it won't get you far in the sex department. Classical music is unpopular because it expresses such a high a level of religious worship and art. Not exactly what adolescents search for.

That Europeans are smarter than Americans. Ugh, that one gets me every time.