The New York Times recently announced that they’re reintroducing The Score, an online column intended as “a forum for contemporary American composers to discuss their work and the larger issues involved in creating music in the 21st century.”

In this newly revived column, composer Glenn Branca ponders the current condition of music, postulating that it’s on the “edge of a paradigm shift,” and a perhaps dismal one at that. Early in the article, he puts forth the following claim:

For more than half a century we’ve seen incredible advances in sound technology but very little if any advance in the quality of music.

Now that’s contentious! One of Branca’s musical pieces and more on this article after the jump…

In his post, Branca claims that the music newly produced today is only “something approximating” music, claiming that “the music industry itself has been subsumed by corporate culture.” His concerns are, in certain ways, easy to identify with, especially his frustration with many musicians and composers favoring recycled musical ideas over new ones:

Why bother doing anything new at all? Why bother having any change or progress at all as long as we’ve got “growth”? I’m just wondering if this is in fact the new paradigm. I’m just wondering if in fact the new music is just the old music again. And, if that in fact it would actually just be the end of music.

On the other hand, what constitutes “new music” anyway? How does one determine that the “quality of music” has failed to improve in the last half century? These sorts of questions are being debated heatedly in his post’s comments section. Feel free to debate Branca’s points here as well!

On a side note, here’s one of Branca’s own compositions, the beautiful “Lesson No. 1 for Electric Guitar” (99 Records, 1980):

Like this article? DIGG it and sign up for our RSS feed!