If you’ve ever squirmed through a concert of what a composer I know calls “crunch-and-thump music,” you’ll likely feel a twinge of sympathy when you read “Admit It, You’re as Bored as I Am,” the slash-and-burn attack on contemporary classical music that Joe Queenan published last week in the Guardian (http://music.guardian.co.uk/classical/ story /0,,2289751,00.html). Mr. Queenan, a music-loving humorist known for his disinclination to suffer fools, has finally decided to admit, both to himself and to the public at large, that he doesn’t like modern music — any kind of modern music, so far as I can gather from his piece, which is a bit on the unspecific side. Still, it isn’t hard to catch Mr. Queenan’s drift from his description of “The Minotaur,” a new opera by Harrison Birtwistle, which he calls “harsh and ugly and monotonous and generically apocalyptic. . . the same funereal caterwauling that bourgeoisie-loathing composers have been churning out since the 1930s.”
more from the WSJ here.