The composers of Bang on a Can recently asked fans to suggest new names for the kind-of-minimalist, sort-of-pop-inflected music they write. The results are posted here, and they range from the perilously plausible to the lustily ludicrous. Some highlights: "Adventure Classical," "antimannerism," "bangcannodality," "Black Clothes Music" (not unjust), "blobist," "brogglinimal cliparabolic," "Church Bingo Chance Music," "Dismalism," "elasti-classical," "Euphoria" (hopefully named for the fictional drug that Brandon Walsh "accidentally" takes on the classic 90210 episode), "Eveen Steeven," "Minimaximal Reverbitrance," "music to be listened to," "Musique Galoupe," "pank," "pluraphonic," "polygism" with a soft "g," "popsical," "Post Secondary Modernists" (obviously inspired by Second Modernism), and, the clear winner, "Where Are the Dancers with the Garbage Lids Music."
The link comes courtesy of NewMusicBox, which currently has a raft of stories on the non-death of classical music, including an excellent piece by Danny Felsenfeld. Quote: "To confuse these institutions [New York Philharmonic, Lincoln Center, etc.] with the music is like worrying about the state of cinema because the Loews theater chain in crisis." I have thought long and hard about this matter and come to the conclusion that the death of classical music is dead, and that all stories about this non-topic — including those protesting that classical music isn't dead after all, as well as those protesting that the entire discussion is a waste of time — are a waste of time.
