What instances of distress can you find of the current state of music throughout history?

Question

We get the occasional question here bemoaning the lack of modern day Mozarts or Bachs, people who say classical music is dead. Throughout the history of music what are some notable examples of critics, composers, conductors performers, etc making the same critique of the music of their day or the future of music?

One of the earliest I'm aware of (from around 1585) is a dialogue between the composer Zoilo and Pope Gregory XII who laments that modern music is so uncouth as to not be beautiful:
“Music for the celebration of the divine praises and offices in plainsong since the publication of Breviary by the Council of Trent have been filled to overflowing with barbarisms, obscurities, contrarieties, and superfluities as a result of the clumsiness or negligence or even wickedness of the composers, scribes, and printers”

Raymond · Accepted Answer

Jacob de Liège and Pope John XXII are among the first critics that deplored the state of the musical art of their time - Ars Nova in this particular case. Here's what de Liège wrote in his Speculum Musicae (1325-1330):

"In a certain company in which some able singers and judicious layment were assembled, and where modern motets in the modern manner and some old ones were sung, I observed that even the laymen were better pleased with the ancient motets and with the ancient manner than with the new. . .Wherein does this lasciviousness in singing so greatly please, by which, as some think, the words are lost, the harmony of consonances is diminished, the value of the notes is changed, perfection is brought low, imperfection is exalted, and measure is confounded?"

''Nor was he alone in his condemnation of the new style. Pope John XXII issued his own bull relating to this style in 1324/25 wherein he comments:
"Certain disciples of the new school, much occupying themselves with the measured dividing of time, display their method in notes which are new to us, preferring to devise ways of their own rather than to continue singing in the old manner; the music, therefore, of the divine offices is now performed with semibreves and minims, and with these notes of small value every composition is pestered. Moreover, they truncate the melodies with hocket, they deprave them with discantus, sometimes even they stuff them with upper parts made out of secular song. . .We now hasten therefore to banish these methods. . . and to put them to flight more effectually than heretofore, far from the house of God."

Have to rush now. I hopefully will have time in the next hours to add further comments to this most interesting question.

Best,

Raymond

Edit Add: Well, that's the earliest quote I can come up with about contemporaries commenting on what was then perceived as a cul-de-sac.

Food for thought: Classical music in 2011 - all music! - is not dead but audiences - and producer$ and promoter$ of all kinds - are seriously ill.

? · Answer

Aey, Kya Bolti Tu Aey, Kya Mein Bolun Sun, Suna, Aati Kya Khandala Kya,Karoon, Aake Mein Khandala, Arey Ghoomenge Phirenge Nachenge Gaaenge Aish Karenge Aur Kya Aey, Kya Bolti Tu Aey, Kya Mein Bolun :-))) Feeling Naughty

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What instances of distress can you find of the current state of music throughout history?

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