The Mystery of the Elusive Contemporary Classical Music

In my previous post I failed to mention why WCPE's airing of Shostakovich's opera "Lady Macbeth" piqued my interest.  It did so, because I never have heard it before.  There is not a lot of opera around in America, unless you live in New York in close proximity to the MET.  Especially there is not a lot of opera in the South.  I never have liked opera much, because what I was taught about it at UNC-Chapel Hill was uninteresting.  So was what I was taught about the Classic Period.  My teacher, a doctor of music having graduated from Yale University, loved Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.  I found it to be trite and boring, but that is not to say that I dislike who is considered one of the world's most beloved composers.  It was just not my cup of tea.  I began taking piano lessons in the first grade against my teacher's will.  She felt the first grade was too young, because a child's hands were not big enough to navigate the keys of the piano.  I persisted, and so she taught me.  Evidently I wanted to learn to play the piano.  For the life of me I can't remember why.  Twelve years later and unrelated to Schoenberg's system or the interval upon which the clarinet over blows for its upper octave, I presented a senior recital of piano material.  In the year of l981 I played two of three of George Gershwin's preludes and the second half of "Rhapsody in Blue."  The other notable piece was Aram Khachaturian's "Toccata."  It is of no consequence that upon hearing Shostakovich's opera "Lady Macbeth" immediately I was content.  In America we are simpletons.  We live in an oppressive bubble which does not like to acknowledge things other than itself.  While America's musical history is diverse and satisfying, that mostly is accomplished by jazz music.  Jazz music and what it represents has been suppressed in America.  Once it represented knowledge, wisdom, and joy.  Today it is hidden from society for fear that the truth may become known.  What truth?  The truth at which my brain arrives is that human beings given serenity and respect can self-actualize.  They can be content creating the things upon which they will rely.  The man does not want this.  The man wants the populace to suffer.  He wants us to suffer, so we will be forced to buy his products.  Vehemently he does not want us to be able to self-actualize.  If we were we would become independent, independent of the man.  Sound familiar?  This is the only logical conclusion I can draw assimilating the understanding that the things once that provided substance for man now are evil.  Devil music?  Freedom?  Free Love?  Happiness?  Health?  Contentment?  That man doesn't want it, so jazz is dead.  For me in particular I no longer can indulge in the pleasure of jazz, because the world is suffering.  The music of the day to be real art must acknowledge and utilize current society.  Our "current society" is superficial pop music, and it is embarrassing.  How the powers at be will allow this image to represent America to the world is beyond me.  Childish high jinx?  Things ain't what they used to be, and I am not asking why.  It just is, like the definition of the word is.  Jazz music is encompassing.  It is representative of the human life force and the evolution of man.  It processes are the human processes man has utilized to survive.  They are spiritual, and the man does not want that.  Spirituality would make us content and therefore independent.  We must abolish religion everywhere, so the human race will become dependent upon the man.  Jazz music has a feeling, and that feeling has been absent from America for some time.  Those jazz musicians who were intent upon remaining jazz musicians changed their feeling with or without knowing it to the "feeling" of pop.  The feeling of jazz is so rare, most people do not know that it exists.  It does exist in the same arena as classical music, but there simply are not enough organizations to promote it.  Jazz was an underground music.  Never was it mainstream in America, but it was there.  I was so elated to hear music by a mainstream Russian composer.  It to me was second nature, and I owe a debt of gratitude to both Aram Khachaturian and Betty Mohn, my high school piano teacher.  Having learned his Toccata the sounds of Russian music were in my ears relatively early in life.  They were not dissimilar from the sounds of George Gershwin's three preludes.  Between l981 and 2015 I tend to lose track of those sounds.  While I have music to which to listen, again the music of the day needs to acknowledge and utilize today.  I secretly wish for America suddenly to grow up and understand the Second Viennese School.  I wish for the Russian Five to be born again.  I wish that Maurice Ravel were here to teach orchestration.  Above all else I wish that the ideas represented in this music could be applicable today in America.  Instead we have nursery rhymes.