I also read both articles.    And y'all have hit on a number of the thoughts I had as I read 'em.

While I think Queenan is being admirably honest in his criticism - it takes balls to stand up and say "I think this stuff is shite" - his article does little to convince me that he knows very much about the music, other than that he apparently owns a lot of it.    But enough about his point of view.  For me, mid/late twentieth century music (and in fact Queenan included Webern and Berg among other early practitioners of atonalism in his wide-sweeping damnation) has every bit as much a place in the spectrum of classical music as the periods prior to it.  Much of it that I own I enjoy, as much for the musical challenge it presents, and the world it so appropriately reflects.   Certain pieces completely elude me....but more often than not I find myself fascinated by their elusiveness, not disgusted.    

The comparison to jazz is made in the article, and I think at its most cerebral, jazz does cross over into similar intellectual territory as "modern classical".  However I do agree with Derek that even the most challenging jazz tends to inhabit a more emotional, and therefore more accessible, space than modern compositional music.     

So onto other things.

Marc hosted a great CD Club last weekend.  I won't go on about the extraordinary food, given Mike's non-attendance (what with the 450km commute), but safe to say I always enjoy a warm summer evening on Marc and ME's top story deck.  Great company, delicious wine, all in all quite stellar.  As a bonus, the music that everyone brought along seemed to me to be of a high quality, and so well worth recording for posterity on the blog.

To kick things off then, I played: 

(1) Wye Oak - 3 tracks from "If Children" (2008).  Baltimore-based band 

(2) Phoenix Foundation (from New Zealand) - 3 tracks from "Horsepower" (2006)

(3) Maritime (former members of Promise Ring and Dismemberment Plan) - 3 from "Heresy and the Hotel Choir" (2007)

(4) Bishop Allen -  1 track from "The Broken String" (2007)...a worthwhile record only briefly touched on.

I didn't get to Foundry Field Recordings' "Prompts/Miscues" (2007), though I think its melancholy guitar pop would have been well received.

All of the above are on emusic.

Until the next, hopefully more frequent, CD outing.