Or We Could Just Keep Forcing It On Unsuspecting Audiences

Art students are, as a rule, fairly well engaged with the world of contemporary art, and a serious knowledge of current masters is considered as essential as being able to distinguish between French Impressionists. So why are so few music students conversant with new music? An outspoken official at the UK’s Royal Academy of Arts thinks that the answer may be that no one has ever bothered to make new music as accessible as modern art has become. A “rigorously and cruelly curated new-music festival in London, like a Biennale” might help, and while we’re changing the world, why not make new-music concerts free to the public, since they never make any real money anyway?