Why we don’t need the Avant-garde anymore (guest article by Jake Bellissimo)
“Oh, they’re an experimental composer.”
“They’re on the forefront of the avant-garde.”
“I’m really into avant-garde music.”
These are all phrases that you hear on a regular basis if you frequent any sort of music community. Started as a term with French origin (literally translating to “advance guard”) to mean the basis of music, art, film, and literature that was on the “experimental side”, avant-garde has slowly become a synonym for what we refer to as “new music”. However, there are a few ways in which labels such as avant-garde or experimental bring up complications in the art music community.
