Will modern classical music be more remembered for its influence (if you will) on certain types of jazz than for itself?

The use of modern classical in jazz, when its done with commitment and is successful does it for me. I can see it's appeal because classical operations are inserted with the improvisational element in jazz. Nevertheless, I do like Morton feldman and so on, I do think they are originals and I'll always keep an eye on modern classical.

Sun ra, it seems to be was interested in many things, not only group improvisations but songs, noise and so on. To restrict to jazz and say that he is soulful when there are a few harsh moments that I've heard is to misinterpret him (I mean, I know you've heard much more than me so you prob. know best).

It's possible that I am simply making the mistake of saying, "I like this better, therefore it is going to survive."

I agree with those who say that a hundred or so years from now, musically speaking, people will be far more interested in the Beatles, and some other pop music, than they are in out high art music.

In the 20th century, classical has become the seat of the "composer's perspective" and jazz, the seat of the "performer's perspective". Both have a basis in traditional music. Both have an avant guarde wing which breaks out of this tradition and explores new music. In the sense that both find new, for example, atonal areas to explore, there can be a resemblance.

But in jazz you are always interested in experiment as a function of the performer's journey, the performer's expressions or virtuosity. In classical you are interested in the experiment as a function of the composer's intellectual journey. Hence a modern composer can be interested in systems, chance, and certain kinds of autonomy given to the performer. But never just straight performer improv, which is *theoretically* boring.

So I think that as long as there are composers and performers, the two types of music will continue to exist and co-evolve.

The interesting wild-card is "pop" which I see as the seat of the "Listener's Perspective". Pop can become completely experimental as with new forms of electronica. But here the experiment comes from the non-theoretical, "non-musician" tradition of listening to and discovering the sounds that are intrinsic to the instruments and equipment, and then discovering which of them "sound good".

The real challange to classical is then, what is the role for the intellectual theorist? If the jazz performers are capable of exploring the limits of performance. And the "pop" musicians can explore the limits of what sounds good. Then what is the composer for? In principle, he / she is the repository of traditional musical theory. During the 20th century, traditional theory was being replaced by alternative theoretical systems. So composers became explorers of these alternatives. Composers become mathematicians and computer programmers and electronic engineers, discovering and inventing new systems and sometimes instantiating them in machines.

But what if we've run out of alternative systems? Cage took the ideas of performer autonomy and chance to the theoretical extreme. Beyond this, there is only room for jazz.

Others have taken the idea of serialism to extremes. Composition software now offers "pop" musicians easy access to play with mathematical system building ... which moves this kind of exploration out of the realm of the composer, and into the realm of the listener.

To keep a separate tradition of composition which isn't just "pop", composers need to find a new theoretical framework to claim as their own.

No, I don't think so.