Secondly, a reply to Andie: Wouldn't it be ridiculous if people were still making music like Cole Porter? Almost as much an anachronism as writing symphonies like Beethoven in the age of Schoenberg ... Music, to say the least, is influenced by its society. I think we have witnessed the growing atomisation of music into genrified ghettoes. When you say classical music is dead, then, do you mean it's impossible to write in 'classical' style any more, or do you mean that there's no good classical music? If it's the latter, then try Thomas Adès, Gavin Bryars, Kaija Saariaho, George Benjamin or Luciano Berio (the late) ...
I think it is stupid to say that there isn't as much 'art' in one sort of music as there is in another. Surely it's a matter of learning the codes? And in talking of 'one' music and 'another', we admit that the coexistence of Liszt and El-P is extremely difficult to theorise using simply one aesthetic theory (though the brutality of 'Funérailles does share something with Fantastic Damage's sparseness). Isn't that, to the naive understanding, the problem with Adorno's aesthetic theory, that he fails to see that there are differences between compositions which are meaningful only within the unwritten conventions of that genre? To the trained observer, isn't Beethoven 1 just inferior Haydn and to the untrained: "it sounds the same")? Beethoven 3, on the other hand, gains meaning from the fact that it brings to light what Haydn omits (Badiou makes this point in referring to the emergence of Classical style through a specific 'Haydn-truth'). Therefore, I couldn't say to some of you - here you go; here are records and compositions that really mean something, because maybe you wouldn't have the right sort of reference points to make them make sense ... you have to, let's admit it, make an effort.
So when you say 'people don't do that sort of stuff at that level anymore', you seem to mean, people don't do any sort of stuff at that level anymore', which I oppose absolutely. First of all, I would question your points of reference. REM and U2 are all well and good, but REM haven't released anything of note since 1992 (and I can't even speak for U2, as most of what I have heard in the last few years has been simply horrible). People speak of Elvis Costello still releasing things that are relevant. I happen to think that all he's doing is aping styles that are considered more highbrow in the hope that some of it will stick. I think I can speak with some confidence about this, since I own every single one of his records but I won't be buying his new one, 'North'. Just because he's worked with the Brodskys and Burt Bacharach and someone one compared one of his records to the Gershwins doesn't make him a better rock musician, which is what he is - a great rock musician and a terrible troubador/classical vocalist/torch song artist (delete as appropriate). It's no accident that his last good album was made in 1994, when he last stopped being pretentious. When rock musicians try to be more (or so they think) than they are (like McCartney releasing 'Standing Stone' - a truly gruesome orchestral work) then they truly become nothing.
I oppose this sort of cultural handwringing of saying, oh, nothing of note has come out since the early 90s ... As if the same thing wasn't said in every other decade! Since I'm only 23, I came to music in the nineties, and ever since, there has been a steady stream of music that has kept me excited (and, to be honest, Nirvana never excited me, and neither do the White Stripes). And I return to the past, and quite often I feel sad that they don't do 'that' any more - I feel sad that no-one writes Romantic symphonies like Mahler; I feel sad that no-one makes oldskool hip hop like Eric B and Rakim; I feel sad that no-one defines outer space like Sun Ra. But then I remember, that, even if they don't do it like _that_, then they still do it, just in a different way - Gavin Bryars rewrites 'classical' (and DNTEL write electronica like it was a constellation); Missy Elliot and Timbaland redefine the co-ordinates of oldskool; Ellen Allien rewires outer space for the sound of technology short-circuiting.
(for the record, drum programming might not be 'human', coming from an 808 or whatever, but it still needs to be programmed - programming is composition by another name.)
Simon
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