Despite the fact that a recent NY Times article claimed that classical music will indeed survive well into the future, I'm still kind of scared. I mean, it's expensive, most people don't discover it until they're more or less adults, and even then, far too many people are afraid of contemporary music. While I don't really have a solution for the expensive part, I've got an idea that can help the other two points. Really, Luigi Dallapiccola had the idea, but since he's been dead for a while, he can't really do much to support said idea. Dallapiccola is, in my mind, the single most overlooked composer from the first half of the 20th century. He was born in northern Italy (Istria, to be precise) at the beginning of the 1900s and eventually settled in Florence. You can read up on the rest of the details of his life on, oh, about 3 sites that exist about him on the web. Anyway, the salient detail regarding Luigi is that he's generally regarded to be the first Italian serialist. That's right, folks. The dude wrote atonal music. But here's the thing: he wrote tonalesque atonal music. After writing some completely diatonic stuff for a while, he got excited about the Second Viennese School, met Webern, and gots to steppin'. He had grown kinda frustrated by the lack of constraint in normal tonal music, so the idea of a strict pitch assigning procedure was super appealing to him. Plus, since he really had a knack for canons and other sort of rigid musical processes, the whole idea to switch over to "the dark side" just made sense.
However, it's not that he didn't like tonality; quite the contrary. The idea was to find a new organizing principal, which is what serialism offered. As an old professor of mine liked to stress, serialism is only a technique; not an aesthetic. So, Dallapiccola instilled in pretty much every atonal piece he wrote traces of tonality. Indeed, there are even a couple authentic V-I cadences I can direct you to. And the result? Why, beauteous music, of course! It's true - Dallapiccola knew what he was doing. There is a certain clear elegance to his work that completely overshadows the fact that it's atonal. (As an aside, he also continued to work in a tonal idiom even after making the formal switch. This stuff mostly consists of arrangements and the like that his publishers asked him to do. It's also quite lovely, though, and an equally important part of his output.)
And now, the point. Part of why people are afraid of modern music and classical music in general, is that it's kind of intimidating. There have been lots of composers, there's the whole "snotty" vibe, which, thankfully, seems to at least be semi-dissolving, and it is kind of a wee bit complicated. But really, the point of it all is to make gorgeous sounds that make us feel. Dallapiccola did that and he did it using the device that made people afraid of modern music in the first place! So here's what I propose: play lots and lots of Dallapiccola, then tell people that it's in no key whatsoever, and stand back! Because I betcha they'll smile. At least in my fantasy world they will. Then, boom! You've just made a new fan of new music, and maybe that person will go clear out the Dallapiccola section at Tower Records on 66th street. (Last time I was there, they had 4 different albums to choose from).
Will it work? Maybe. I like to be optimistic. And really, I just think Luigi desserves some mad props, yo. The technical side of his work is really kinda awesome and it sounds good; not an easy feat. So there you have it. If you want some recomendations, let me know! Otherwise, just remember that he existed and then when you're bored one day, you can look him up in your local library, lament the fact that they won't have anything, and go on a rant similar to this one at a party. Or something like that.