Should I say, "I wish I liked contemporary music more"?
"I wish I liked modern music more"?
One feels such a philistine.... it's like admitting to not liking poetry. Or Brando's "acting." Or sushi. Or goat cheese. (My shame on this account is no doubt exacerbated by my high school humanities field trips and the beginnings of my "free tickets with student I.D." days having coincided with the tail end of Boulez's [Boulezs'? Boulez'z?] tenure with the NY Philharmonic and subsequent lionization.)
Stipulating that serialism, at least, is a dead letter, there are other musical attempts at modernity to which i just do not take.
But I have learned that just as the mighty King of Instruments, (why isn't it the "Queen of Instruments?" a friend once suggested it was because a king usually takes a queen. I digress,) is a gateway to actually enjoying sonorous dissonance, the oboe produces so winsome a sound that it makes palatable that which would set my teeth on edge played by the finest violinist in the world.
There is a lot to love on Michele Fiala's The Light Wraps You: New Music for Oboe,
and
Overheard, (I liked the Averill very much,)
and especially
A Tree in Your Ear. (Give Stephen Caplan's "Miniatures" a listen.)
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