I’ve gotten really into Beethoven recently, and have been trying to learn to understand the language as much as possible.

My take after hundreds of hours of listening and reading is that it’s awesome music, but it doesn’t make me feel “more” than listening to an album from a modern artist that I love. I’m coming to think that the idea that its more nuanced and complex than great modern artists is dogmatic nonsense. It’s putting 18th century musical theory on a pedestal, and claiming that music is only complex if it’s doing creative things within that form.

I don’t see it. Yeah, listening intently to his 3rd Symphony is “sublime” and I love it, but I just am not seeing how I’m getting more out of that than out of listening to a Tame Impala album or my favourite Kanye West album. And I fail to see how the music is more complex and takes you on more of an emotional journey either. For example, why doesn’t the immense palate of sounds and textures that modern production allows for not counting towards “complexity”? How are albums that go from sounding fully analog to very electronic to garagey to minimal to maximal not count towards nuance and complexity?

Beethoven’s music is just one more thing I like. Happy to call it great. But even if I accept Scott’s idea that art is getting worse because it’s less ornamental and more basic/minimal, I just don’t accept that when it comes to great music from today. There’s plenty of artists, popular and not, that make music as nuanced and detailed as Beethoven.