In 1955, Henry Pleasants, the American music critic and intelligence officer, wrote in The Agony of Modern Music, “Serious music is a dead art. The vein which for 300 years offered a seemingly inexhaustible yield of beautiful music has run out.” Yet here we are, some 68 years later, and on any given evening in most large American, European, or Asian cities, one can find an orchestral performance, chamber-music recital, or opera to attend. (That wasn’t true of Asian cities in 1955.) Music departments in universities continue to offer courses in harmony, counterpoint, and Schubert lieder, even if the courses are no longer required of music majors. Record sales may have slumped—they have for all genres in the wake of streaming—but YouTube performances of pretty much any and every classical composition, minor and major, can be found with the tap of a finger.
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