claritas said:

   
There seem to be two approaches to programming modern works alongside classics: stick the modern work on the first part of the program so everyone has to sit through it (or risks coming late to the second part) or stick it at the end so people can leave early. I go to piano recitals, where the repertoire is even more standardized, so the problem doesn't come up.
 
My old man really enjoys modernism, which he calls "the music of my time." I like to say that I too enjoy the music of my time: the Baroque.

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I generally avoid major American orchestras when this occurs as it kills my spirit.
About a decade ago I saw James Levine program Elliott Carter and Mozart together in Boston and the sea of restless,
muttering, white haired old women and coughing, shifting, elderly men was enough to ruin the whole night.
 
Nothing against the elderly, I too am not young but...
 
And this kind of thing is not limited to mixed genre concerts.It's commonplace anytime an American orchestra plays modern music.
I've seen it often.
For example I saw Boulez conducting in the mid 1990's in Cleveland.
This concert was specifically billed as a program of 20th music consisting of Stravinsky, Varese and Berg.
In the middle of a quiet section of Berg's 3 pieces for orchestra a party of 5 or 6 elderly couples insisted on leaving the concert in a noisy, talkative fashion.
They looked as if they had been personally assaulted.

Too many orchestra programmers sprinkle in modern classical music like they were administering cough medicine. It tastes bad but it's good for you!

perhapss said:

   
I generally avoid major American orchestras when this occurs as it kills my spirit.
About a decade ago I saw James Levine program Elliott Carter and Mozart together in Boston and the sea of restless,
muttering, white haired old women and coughing, shifting, elderly men was enough to ruin the whole night.
 
Nothing against the elderly, I too am not young but...
 
And this kind of thing is not limited to mixed genre concerts.It's commonplace anytime an American orchestra plays modern music.
I've seen it often.
For example I saw Boulez conducting in the mid 1990's in Cleveland.
This concert was specifically billed as a program of 20th music consisting of Stravinsky, Varese and Berg.
In the middle of a quiet section of Berg's 3 pieces for orchestra a party of 5 or 6 elderly couples insisted on leaving the concert in a noisy, talkative fashion.
They looked as if they had been personally assaulted.

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Over here, mixing the old and modern/contemporary music is scarce. There are two groups of concerts of 90%+
modern/contemporary music, one by Društvo slovenskih skladateljev ( Society of Slovenian Composers ) and above mentioned Slowind Festival. At both, people that would need an advance "warning" that this is not going to be Mozart's Little Night Music are next to non existant. It has been said by more than one visiting living composer that crowds that gather here on modern/contemporary music concerts are bigger than say in New York.
 
Admittedly, one also has to be in the mood to stomach say an entire FESTIVAL dedicated to say Vinko Globokar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinko_Globokar, as it was in 2013. Just to get you a glimpse what it might have looked like: here the composition by Vinko Globokar titled Corporel - performed by no other but the author himself in 2002, at the age of 68, on the eve he was recipient of the Prešeren Award ( the highest award for culture possible in Slovenia ) at the ceremony held in Cankarjev Dom http://www.cd-cc.si/en/. - the "official" centre of arts in the country. Although he would not admit it, he did not attend that ceremony out of protest that he felt such an accolade was long overdue; he chose to perform in the most alternative place possible instead , at the Metelkova Mesto complex http://www.metelkovamesto.org/?lang=txt_eng&  ( used to be military barracks back in the times of Yugoslavia ), at the venue called Menza pri koritu . And this is how it looked like:
 

 
Basically, Vinko Globokar is and will continue to push the envelope of what is possible in unconventional and different and assaulting to the status quo - to force one to think on a MUCH different level - till his last breath. 

bigshot said:

  Too many orchestra programmers sprinkle in modern classical music like they were administering cough medicine. It tastes bad but it's good for you!

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This is indeed true at times.
 
What's also true is many conductors(especially in the US) continue to perform lackluster versions of classic masterpieces
that provide no new insight into those classic masterpieces.This is done because they are trying to appease the donors(who are often old,wealthy non-musicians) and further their own  precarious career choice by "safe" programming.
Museum work IMO.

perhapss said:

  This is indeed true at times.
 
What's also true is many conductors(especially in the US) continue to perform lackluster versions of classic masterpieces that provide no new insight into those classic masterpieces.This is done because they are trying to appease the donors(who are often old,wealthy non-musicians) and further their own  precarious career choice by "safe" programming.
 
Museum work IMO.

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The difference is that the museum works are truly worthy of belonging in a museum. I can say the same of comparatively less music since Mahler.
 
(Lest I be considered some "hater" of modernism, I'll add that when I was an NYP subscriber for half a dozen years, my subscription included all of the premieres. I certainly grant that we've had some modern masterpieces, such as Shostakovich's fifth and Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, but nothing like what we've inherited. At a some point, I chose to investigate less well-known works by the old masters instead of some new guy I hadn't heard of.)

claritas said:

   
The difference is that the museum works are truly worthy of belonging in a museum. I can say the same of comparatively less music since Mahler.
 
(Lest I be considered some "hater" of modernism, I'll add that when I was an NYP subscriber for half a dozen years, my subscription included all of the premieres. I certainly grant that we've had some modern masterpieces, such as Shostakovich's fifth and Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, but nothing like what we've inherited. At a some point, I chose to investigate less well-known works by the old masters instead of some new guy I hadn't heard of.)

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"The difference is that the museum works are truly worthy of belonging in a museum. I can say the same of comparatively less music since Mahler."
 
This is because despite major institutional neglect, new music still lives and breathes and doesn't need to be stuffed and shelved.
Incidentally,the lack of breadth of programming extends to both old and new music alike in the USA.
Their is a very limited amount of works from any era that fall outside the "greatest hits" mentality.
The museum as it stands today is seriously lacking variety and creativity of it's exhibitions.
 
You take a very condescending view of contemporary music yet put forth similar cliches that could have been from Beethoven's reviews during his time.
For example:
 
"I certainly grant that we've had some modern masterpieces, such as  bla, bla, blaaa..and blablabla..., but nothing like what we've inherited."
This is tired thinking IMO.
 
 
 The fact that you haven't bothered  to investigate "some new guy" makes you least qualified to assess his music because you know nothing about it (having not investigated).
 
In addition, Subscription people are often the worst.
Many feel entitled to their favorite music because of their cash investment.Typically the more they contribute the more this feeling of entitlement increases.
Often they feel expert in all fields of music because they go to every(or at least some)concert of "their" orchestra and read most of the programs and pamphlets etc...

perhapss said:

  [my post interspersed with your rude misinterpretations]

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claritas said:

   

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I think my points were fairly objective​

perhapss said:

  This is indeed true at times.
 
What's also true is many conductors(especially in the US) continue to perform lackluster versions of classic masterpieces
that provide no new insight into those classic masterpieces.This is done because they are trying to appease the donors(who are often old,wealthy non-musicians) and further their own  precarious career choice by "safe" programming.
Museum work IMO.

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That's why classical music is much less a part of the average person's everyday life than it was 100 years ago. It was replaced first by jazz, then rock. Contemporary classical music is a pale shadow of what it used to be several generations ago. Now all we can do is preserve the past and try to find something relevant in it for modern people.

perhapss said:

  I think my points were fairly objective

​

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No, you're being really thin-skinned about your favorites and very presumptuous about my experience. Modernism needs better advocacy than that, but too late for now.

bigshot said:

   
That's why classical music is much less a part of the average person's everyday life than it was 100 years ago. It was replaced first by jazz, then rock. Contemporary classical music is a pale shadow of what it used to be several generations ago. Now all we can do is preserve the past and try to find something relevant in it for modern people.

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I'm not sure I agree classical music was ever a big part of the "average person's everyday life" in the USA.
I also think jazz and rock  grew more out of folk and popular music.
I'm surprised you didn't also mention the film music of 20th century.
As you are well aware, it incorporated and disseminated all of these styles and formed a whole new concept/dimension of entertainment in people's lives.
This was especially true in the USA.
 
 
Actually, there is arguably more contemporary music being played now than ever before.
There are many new music ensembles that are alternatives to the traditional orchestra system.
Especially in European countries.
 
As for preserving the past, good luck with that!
It's a whole lot easier to do so in many ways with digital technology.
When I was younger, I had to make a lot more effort to research these things.
Then again, I had to care enough to do so.....

Classical music and opera were a big part of American culture up through the 20s and was only supplanted when Jazz swept in. Almost every household had a piano with Chopin sheet music in the bench and a Victrola packed with Red Seals of Caruso, Galli-Curci and Stokowski. Every decent sized city in the country had its own symphony orchestra.
 
Classical music split in the fifties and sixties when American composers who worked in familiar forms were brushed off by critics in favor of avant garde ones who created music less for the common man than for critics and other avant garde composers. The same split happened in Jazz between the figs and the boppers. Ultimately both lost their audience to new forms of music based on different threads of music. In a sense, both classical and jazz committed suicide because they turned their backs on the people in the seats and focused on conceptualism and theory instead.
 
Film soundtracks mined traditional classical music for things to repurpose. It ended up being a lot more interesting than the contemporary classical music.

Good lord! Did anyone else actually play that dreadful vinko globokor video! I got 40 seconds in before I bailed!

bigshot said:

  Classical music and opera were a big part of American culture up through the 20s and was only supplanted when Jazz swept in. Almost every household had a piano with Chopin sheet music in the bench and a Victrola packed with Red Seals of Caruso, Galli-Curci and Stokowski.
 
Classical music split in the fifties and sixties when American composers who worked in familiar forms were brushed off by critics in favor of avant garde ones who created music less for the common man than for critics and other avant garde composers. The same split happened in Jazz between the figs and the boppers. Ultimately both lost their audience to new forms of music based on different threads of music. In a sense, both classical and jazz committed suicide because they turned their backs on the people in the seats and focused on conceptualism and theory instead.
 
Film soundtracks mined traditional classical music for things to repurpose. It ended up being a lot more interesting than the contemporary classical music.

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"Almost every household had a piano with Chopin sheet music in the bench and a Victrola packed with Red Seals of Caruso, Galli-Curci and Stokowski."
Actually this was only the case in some households of a certain class. "Almost every" is a gross exaggeration.
 
I'm not sure what evidence this provides to support your claim that contemporary music is pales to what was happening 100 years ago.
For example, despite the tremendous influence in the film and academic communities, Arnold Schoenberg's music was rarely performed in the concert hall.
If you go back to 1914, his, Webern and Berg's music was laughed at and derided regularly.
They were hardly exceptional examples of what happened to contemporary composers of their time.
This despite the pioneering work of Stokowski or anyone else.
 
As for "suicide", there are still many orchestras playing to very real audiences all around the world.
So death is also a gross exaggeration.
 
There is also a lot of contemporary music outside the mainstream.
Just like before.

 

Just like before.

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Even more now actually.