This is actually one of the oldest sections of the site, but was never elaborated as I'd intended some twenty-five years ago. As far as revisiting it now, my use of the term "modern" ends up being rather casual, and includes what I've come to interrogate more extensively as "the postmodern." (This section would probably be better titled "contemporary" or the like then, i.e. in order to dodge stylistic-aesthetic associations, but I'm continuing to retain the prior URLs....)
There's also a wide variety of material here in terms of originating (my own writing, that is) from the 1990s into the 2020s. Some of it is consequently more developed or more in tune with my current thinking. (Some of the brief discussions are also definitely dated at this point.) A few write-ups that should (still) generally be useful:
Some of these pages have (inevitably) been updated more recently than others: There are one or more dates at the bottom of each, though, in part for determining how current any thoughts there might be....
And as suggested, in some cases I also started pages here intending to expand upon them, and then didn't. (The timing of this page was actually a little after I wrote some more extensive discussions elsewhere, and I'd anticipated including similar thoughts here on my own terms. Or in some cases, I've done some updates, but it's been a while....) Perhaps some earlier thoughts on these pages retain some value:
And finally, a few pages with older or limited discussion that I probably should've put on the classical page from the start anyway, as their music (& my commentary) largely fits within that (older) horizon:
Perhaps to tie together the two main notions of "modern" that tend to intersect in this space, then, I might go on to suggest that the eventual articulation of "modern art" actually heralded the end of the modern era (in its broad, historical sense), and so in turn anticipated the postmodern. One can observe such a nexus particularly between the "modern" visual art of approximately one hundred years ago & "postmodern" musical ideas of more recent decades.
In any case, hopefully some of these discussions & accompanying recording information are still useful. Although I've recently added some material here, I'm not anticipating an ongoing expansion....
To Music page.
Todd M. McComb <mccomb@medieval.org> Updated: 10 April 2021