Kronos Quartet

Kronos Quartet - Clouded Yellow

Ironically, classical music today seems to be the musical genre that is the least controlled by any rules or conventions. The same genre used to scold composers for using parallel octaves, and now it's okay with doing nothing for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. It purely focuses on sound, and it's also okay not to focus on the sound. It doesn't fixate on sending a message to the listeners, and it's also okay to send a message. It's liberating - it's almost sexy. Wanna be cool? Listen to contemporary classical. Below is a quote from one of my favorite articles Listen To This, originally posted in The New Yorker in 2004.

"It seems to me that a lot of younger listeners think the way the iPod thinks. They are no longer so invested in a single genre, one that promises to mold their being or save the world. This gives the lifestyle disaster called “classical music” more of a chance. Although the music is far from attaining any sort of countercultural cachet, it is no longer a plausible target for teen rebellion, given that all the parents listen to the Eagles. (A colleague pointed out to me that the movie “School of Rock” pictures a private school where classical music is forced down students’ throats. The closing credits don’t specify which alternate universe this is set in.) Committed rock fans are likely to know a fair amount about twentieth-century composition, especially the avant-garde. Mavens of electronic dance music list among their heroes Stockhausen, Terry Riley, and, especially, Steve Reich, who avoids the temptation to sue his less inventive admirers. Mark Prendergast’s book “The Ambient Century,” a history of the new electronic genres, begins, startlingly enough, with Gustav Mahler."