Why the Avant-Garde Isn’t the Enemy of Tradition

The Pursuit of Beauty with Matthew Wilkinson · Feb 4, 2026 · 1h 2m

Modern music, classical music, avant-garde, tonality, postmodernism, and music philosophy are at the center of this conversation between composer and analyst Samuel Andreyev and host Matthew Wilkinson. Together, they examine one of the most common stories we are told about modern music and ask whether it is actually true.A central claim explored here is that tonality never disappeared. While figures such as Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Milton Babbitt developed new and experimental musical systems, tonal music continued to exist alongside them. The conversation challenges the idea…