New music mourns with a strange and violent passion. Each announcement of the death of a major composer sparks a river of public grief that is always torrential at its mouth—floods of tributes, letters, anecdotes, love notes, lessons, all offered in the reification of the dead. In the days that follow, the artist’s work receives a sentimental and overwhelming reappraisal. The catalog is combed for deep cuts that set the Internet awash in honorary playlists and fresh YouTube links, ensembles plan tribute concerts and portrait celebrations, festivals dig through archives for forgotten photos. Within this mass ritual are small selfish ripples, the eagerness to claim weight from the composer’s name in their newfound absence: Performers resurrect their own recordings of the artist’s music, writers call up old articles on the subject, composers cite favorite influential works, emphasizing a piece’s impact on their own music to reinforce the privileged path of aesthetic inheritance.
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