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Hi all, So recently I was asked to write a piece for brass ensemble for the Manhattan School of Music Precollege Brass Ensemble. The name really is a mouthfull, but it was just premiered two weeks ago at the Manhattan School. It was the first live performance of one of my pieces. You can hear/watch the performance here: http://www.youtube.c...nel_video_title It's not perfect, but expecting a perfect performance is unrealistic. They also had been playing for some time before this. Since then I was recently asked to write a piece for symphonic band to premiere in China. My college's band is doing a week and a half-long tour of Beijing and Xi'an, so I'm in the process of putting something together for that, which I'm really excited about. It's been a while since I've been on here. Go to my facebook page and like it if you're interested in more updates about stuff :). www.facebook.com/michaeltdefilippis Below is the concert program in which my name appears for the first time with some not-so-bad company.

Obviously this is my opinion, and I'm sure this has been brought up before, but I need to know. Why is classical music so bad now? There's this kind of horrible post-tonal music around that is just completely awful. It's honestly making me lose hope in composing. I'm going to go even further and say most COMPOSERS, not just musicians, like classical music from before 1920 MUCH more than music since. I think they just don't want to seem musically stupid, and when they compose this new music, it's very hard for others to poke holes in it. They like this. Say a student composer writes something in the vein of a 19th century composer but with more progressive harmony and their own personal flair. People could potentially shoot holes in this. But by writing this current intellectual garbage, no one can shoot their music down. It can almost always be defended in some way. I'd wager nearly all (99%) musicians don't want to hear Cage (for example) over Beethoven and they never will. This is the composers fault - it isn't the audience's or the performer's. People like music the most when it is fundamentally about emotion. They don't like it when it's about going against the grain or appealing to some abstract plan or form. We as a community are actively trying to be open to this music and we still don't like it. I'm losing hope though. What performers and musicians demanded of composers ~100 years ago was so much more human and so much more real than what is at work nowadays. Now composers write one big work a year, and maybe a song cycle or something, and it all sounds like complete crap. They are obsessed with being original. How original was Bach? Think about that question. Also, look deep in yourself: do you really like music composed in the last 75 years more than say Beethoven or Chopin or Mahler or Bach?

Yeah that's true, I'm just saying look at the big picture. A lot of composers do just that, they blame others for not liking their music and say they just don't understand.

Life is more simple when we blame others isn't it ? it's not about how "popular" something is, that means nothing, we can decide ourselves if we like something or not without asking the masses.

I have done a lot of studying on Lutoslawski and Penderecki in the past three months. I can't say I'm a fan of either although a minute few of Lutoslawsk's works I enjoy. I have had two teaches that are in love with serialism and post-serialism...to the point of goose bumps. They even have a festival of four days of that type of music. I don't think that style of music, which the author of this thread is probably pertaining to, will ever catch the public's eye. If a symphony orchestra will have a week's concert of post-serialism, the auditorium would be lose to empty (this has been said by many of conductors, you don't need my word on that.) However, there are some, esp in academia, that love it. Does it matter? Who knows...

Kindly rename the thread to "Why do I prefer older music?" You'll get more straightforward replies, like: "That's just your personal preference, I guess. Each to his own." Do not make an objective statement about the quality of music and then claim a decadent musical world based on your personal distaste for something.

You shouldn't generalize like that. If this is your opinion it's fine but speak only for yourself, you can't possibly know about 99% of composers :P

Let's be clear ! first of all the harmonic and counterpoint rules you describe concern a little part of music history ( let's say the baroque and classical periods). Unfortunately school & conservatory classes are based on tonal harmonic and counterpoint methods that apply rules extracted from the music of 17th and 18th century ! Did you know J.S Bach never wrote a "scholastic fugue" ? No ! however all the fugues he wrote were fantastic ! at the end of the 19th century, do you think Claude Debussy took care about paralell octaves and fifths ? no ! Do you think modal music from antic period to renaissance respected the rules you are talking about for many centuries ? No ! Guys, the great composers always used the "exception" that makes a composition unique !