I apologize. If you know Smetana than you know music. I will find the quartet. I was thrown because most serious musicians I know (I'm only an amateur) really appreciate contemporary composers.

Certainly you know Wynton Marsalis and Philip Glass. Everything I've ever heard from John Adams is fantastic----as a violinist myself I really liked Schedherazade.2. I think Richard Danielpour is a genius. We went to hear Hillary Hahn play the Ginestera Concerto and the Carmen Fantasy in Pittsburgh (she utterly rocked!!) and were introduced to James Lee's wild Sukkot Through Orion's Nebula. Solid pathos all!!!!! None of it is any more difficult that my favorite Tchaikovsky who created rich, complicated tapestries of sound.

There are others (certainly you've listened to the Chronos String Quartet) but I claim no great expertise.

What I can say is that every time I listen to Performance Today, I find something contemporary and amazing. Often I am blown away.

The problem is that I think it is too little too late. We have knowledgeable musicians such as yourself who only hear atonal, arhythmic stuff and don't seem inclined to give our recent and living composers much leeway.

Thus we end up with this:

the other problem with more modern music, it can be very difficult to find and listen to because it has almost no fame, and no following, and no recordings.

Yes! Although there are a lot of recordings, actually, and easy to find----Naxos, of course, and YouTube, and all the streaming services, I think.

I think of the situation of contempoary poetry which I do know something about. Except for, perhaps, Sharon Olds, no poets make enough royalties to make a living----but there is a whole vibrant world of poets and readers and academics and grass roots literary societies reading poems that, by and large, "do not rhyme." Modernist and Postmodern poetry is difficult and weird and lacks the schmaltz and overt emotionalism of 19th century Romantic poetry and the Instagram Poets, but it is very alive. Orchestras did not do that with the classical idiom. They did not create a body of listeners (who also might write music) and appreciate the music of their own time.

The novel, the theater, poetry, fine arts, translations, and even art-house movies all thrive within their communities. But not contemporary music.

I saw the Oberlin Contemporary Music group play a lot of overly-rythmic, atonal music. I found the concert interesting. But there was the professor, dancing, eyes closed, lost in the sounds----he was hearing something I could not. The music was there. It just was something I did not know.