John Tavener is the composer of the moment in Britain. His music is undeniably popular with the public. But he’s not exactly a fan of much music history: “I hate progress, I hate development and I hate evolution in most things, but in music particularly,” Tavener has written. Schoenberg is “the filthy, rotten ‘dirt dump'” of the 20th century. The German tradition from Bach to Berg is a “rotting corpse” and “a hideous sound world”. – The Guardian