The New Challenges of New Thinking

The blog responses to Justin Davidson’s provocative piece, “The New New York School” from March 20, 2011 in New York Magazine—an appraisal of the music of several young New York composers—are so far coming down almost unanimously against Davidson’s thesis that our contemporary inclusiveness gives young composers nothing to rebel against, leaving their energies scattered and ultimately diluted, no matter how much energy the pieces exude on their surfaces. He is called out as being an old school modernist, entrenched in a decrepit idea—that making something new requires rejecting the formerly new.