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Minimalism was "avant-garde" when it was explored as a response to Serialism. Its history is comprised of works that would be considered unlistenable to most au

Minimalism was "avant-garde" when it was explored as a response to Serialism. Its history is comprised of works that would be considered unlistenable to most audiences. Calling any modern regurgitation of Glass's very-listenable minimalism "avant-garde" is misleading and shuts out the contemporary listener to an entire world of avant-garde music - much of it, very listenable.

majormajor 6y ago
> Calling any modern regurgitation of Glass's very-listenable minimalism "avant-garde" is misleading and shuts out the contemporary listener to an entire world of avant-garde music - much of it, very listenable. I think that's reinforced by the anecdote from the original poster, though. There's still a significant fraction of the audience who dismisses his work out of hand. Yes, they're shut out of even more stuff, but they aren't even open to him, yet. I could see my mother being the upset person in the first story...
alasdair_ 6y ago
>Calling any modern regurgitation of Glass's very-listenable minimalism "avant-garde" is misleading and shuts out the contemporary listener to an entire world of avant-garde music - much of it, very listenable. I'm not convinced that someone simply using the word "avant-garde" shuts anyone out of anything. For example, if I type "Taylor Swift is avant-garde" did this suddenly shut out listeners from an entire world of pop music?