Contemporary History?

Leonard Bernstein once wrote, "... I have far more pleasure in following the musical adventures of SImon & Garfunkel or of The Association sining 'Along Comes Mary' than I have in most of what is being written now by the whole community of 'avant garde' composers... Pop music seems to be the only area where there is to be found unabashed vitality, the fun of invention, the feeling of fresh air.  Everything else suddenly seems old-fashioned: electronic music, serialism, chance music- they have already acquired the musty odor of academicism."

This is what I'm thinking about as I am about to start my study of contemporary music history.  Although, that's a contradiction... contemporary music history.

It seems as though the more documentation of historical things, the more difficult it is for historians to generalize.  For example, there are lots of generalizations about early music.  There are not multiple different music movements, each with it's own label, it's own chapter, it's own list of composers and typical forms.  However, there are multiple chapters with multiple different sectional headings about mid-19th century music and beyond.  I wonder if it would be to our benefit to be able to categorize it better.  I'm not suggesting that I would like music to all fit neatly into one box; rather, I would like there to be more structure and framework in which to understand music and the historical movements of more recent times.  And then again, maybe it's impossible to give more framework, as we are not far enough removed from the events.

The book I'm taking notes from is fine.  I'm starting to find some irritations with it- such as it's intense focus on instrumental music in later periods.  From 1850-1900, it had two pages about sacred music.  That's it.  But dozens of pages on instrumental music.  I don't care to read multiple different pages on the break down of a variety of symphonies (their form, harmonic tendencies, etc).  There was one sentence written about Brahms's Requiem.  That sentence was basically saying, "Hey, there was sacred music.  Brahms wrote a Requiem."

I have made and am making a list of composers who wrote vocal music during this time so that I can look up some of their vocal stuff once I have finished the book.

Who knows?  Maybe there will be more about choral music in the upcoming chapters about Sergei Diaghilev, set theory, and Alban Berg...

Although, as a reminder to myself, my placement exam covers both instrumental and choral history.  I just care a lot less about the instrumental stuff, so it seems very tedious.