Looks like I’m a little late to the party

Now the party begins!

Oh, my. I hadn’t seen this video before, but I’m watching it now and it’s so bad. His arguments are on par with the average r/classicalmusic user decrying “modernism” and the “avant-garde.”

I’m having a hard time finding his post in /r/classicalmusic about it where he and I got into it a bit. It was frustrating, of course.

But most importantly, he holds classical music in such contempt while at the same time trying to appear that not only is he knowledgeable about classical music but that he likes it and is sympathetic toward it. None of that is true. As you note, many of his off-hand comments betray his ignorance as well.

committing the r/musictheory special of assuming that all music is jazz.

There was a weird phenomenon a number of years ago where it seemed like computer science types were positioning themselves as the top experts in every single field of study because they could dash off a Python script in an afternoon to solve the most difficult problems in all these fields. It doesn’t seem as bad anymore but back in the day, whew!, it was a sight to behold! Anyway, Neely seems to have a bit of that about him, classical music can be best explained in terms of jazz and where it can’t, it’s not worth thinking about anyway.

seems not to have realized that electronic music’s biggest pioneers were classical composers, that classical composers have been writing scores for electronic music (both fixed and live electronics) for decades

Yeah, it’s just some basic research or maybe even paying attention in class. Oops, he went to Berklee so who knows what he “learned” there!

I have to admit, I didn’t expect the video to be that bad.

Adam is always full of surprises!