None of these remarks are intended to condemn popular music (I would far prefer to listen to a favourite track by Michael Jackson than suffer through another BBC Proms commission). What these observations do illuminate, however, is the connection between the profound changes which affected the regulation of our sexual conduct during the 1960s, and, at the very same time, the decline of enduring new classical works, and the explosion of popular music onto the cultural scene as a new expressive force. In a sense, popular music stole classical music's mojo. Of course, my analysis is a broad gesture that does not take jazz or minimalism into account—which provide, so to speak, a bridge between the world of classical and popular music—nor does it explain the many other popular styles which existed before the 1960s (although these themselves bear witness to a growing liberalism), but it nevertheless represents a key moment, and helps to demonstrate the gradual passing of the baton that took place in music as progressive societies entered modernity.

Musical modernism is what was left behind after the feelings which motivated the great classical composers had dissipated. What you are hearing in the dysfunctional harmony and unattractive groans of Harrison Birtwistle and his many imitators is a massive God-shaped hole, where once natural authority and faith resided. This is what "atonal" music really is: a loss of faith, and this is why anyone who counteracts its dominance is quickly condemned as "naive", in just the same manner as those who continue to hold religious convictions in a scientific age. It is what has led composers such as Robin Holloway to confess that "all we like sheep have dumbly concurred in the rightness of [Schoenberg's] stance; against the evidence of our senses and our instincts".

I would be the first to acknowledge the dramatic talents of Alban Berg, the brilliant textural instrumentation of György Ligeti or the accomplished musicianship of Thomas Adès, but what all these composers have in common—despite the stylistic differences and time which separate their work—is that lack of inspiration within the musical material itself which began with Schoenberg and persists to this day. They all suffer from that excruciatingly dreary, lifeless sound which turns audiences off for want of "a good tune" (even if this phrase doesn't quite capture what they mean), and which is why ultimately none of their music has entered the standard repertoire, or enjoys   anything near the popular recognition of the composers I listed earlier. It is why modern orchestras and opera houses suffer an endlessly commissioned conveyor-belt of "world premieres", forgotten the moment they see the light of day, and it is why the money is now finally starting to run out, with the state less willing to pay for it all and private patronage (for the obvious reason that it is unlovable) unwilling to fill the gap.

All the phoney "outreach projects", pseudo-pop fusions or desperate appeals to political correctness cannot halt this inevitable financial decline, and, with the copyright on composers like Rachmaninoff and Vaughan Williams due to expire soon, an already ailing publishing industry—which has colluded for far too long in maintaining the illusion that musical modernism was ever worth much—is going to have its coffers hit hard. A list of the most popular rental titles offered by the major music publisher Boosey & Hawkes as of 2012 bears this contention out, since none of the works in question was written after 1960, nor could any of them be remotely considered atonal:

1. Bernstein: Symphonic Dances From "West Side Story"
2. Bernstein: Overture to "Candide"
3. Mussorgsky/Ravel: Pictures at an Exhibition
4. Britten: The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra
5. Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2
6. Britten: Four Sea Interludes
7. Copland: Appalachian Spring Suite
8. Copland: Clarinet Concerto