Interesting article rverne, thanks. I don't have enough time or space here to expound my views to a satisfactory degree, so I have to be presumptuous of some common concensual ground most of the time, and leave some thoughts unexplored. However, I don't ever - I hope - resort to empty rhetoric as noldar12 suggests some people do here (and they do), I believe I always put some thoughts behind every notion, even if they are fire-glazed most of the time...
So, keeping this in mind, on with some rhetoric:
a) Adorno is not to be taken seriously as he was a militant Marxist, hence not at all objective. He would appreciate Mozart's G minor symphony only through a political prism - no purism there. Additionally, Schoenberg is not just miles below Stravinsky alone in the musical pyramid, but below Bartok, Mahler, Rachmaninov, Sibelius, Prokofiev, Scriabin, the list continues for some time... For I judge nobody in terms of influence as most others do (Mozart and Brahms created no 'schools'); but solely on the basis of their musical worth. Of course this is subjective, but I challenge everybody here to have a look at their CD collections (the ones they paid for exclusively) and make their own list of preferences...
b) I always hated the marquee 'Modernism'. It sounds vital and alive, but artistically it means nothing at all, other than indicating currency and favour. All those twirps 100 years ago handcuffed themselves in their blinkered arrogance and 'avant-garde' syndromes, by calling their art 'modern' (I guess there was nothing else positive to call it). As decades passed as a matter of course and techniques and methodologies changed, they needed to call their newer artistic accomplishments something else. They were the 'modern' ones then (in mode, in vogue), but predecessors had already used the term 'modern' for ideas and art that had germinated 30-40 years before them. So, still blinkered, they named their era 'post-modern', leaving the obvious problem for the next generation to deal with...
I've always sneered at that term since my student days, for it represented nothing (like Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Classicism, Romanticism, Symbolism - and even Neo Classicism and Neo Romanticism to a lesser degree - do). Any nomenclature with the prefix 'Post-' or 'Anti-' is a joke to begin with. It has some meaning initially before a novel philosophical or artistic trend has taken final shape, as it separates it from what preceded it, but down the timeline it has to be defined on its own terms; not those of the previous school of thought or expression, under any circumstances. Is Neo-Post-Modernism in its infancy?...
c) Peter Franklin in rverne's article uses the term 'symphonic' appropriately, whereas I have used it in this forum conventionally. Using proper terms and frameworks then, it is impossible and unnecessary to compare proper symphonic music to film-music, and their respective composers. As much as we admire Herrmann, Kornglod, Steiner (to use names from the article), but also Waxman, Tiomkin, Rozsa, and Williams, one would know very little about music not to understand how these masters can be Olympians / Mt. Rushmore figures in film-music, and next to absolutely invisible in symphonic music and its history, both at the same time.
They all wrote for orchestra, but the two art-forms could scarcely be more different in artistic scope and quality (just ask Herrmann, Korngold, and Williams). Rushmore with them on one side; the Himalayas with Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Chopin, Brahms, Tchaikovsky (I obviously disagree with Franklin on this one), Debussy, Ravel, Stravisnky, Bartok, and many-many-many-many countless others on the other. They all wrote great music! The former wrote great film-music, the latter great art-music; and that's not just an opinion, but a global consensus and understanding that even the greatest film-composers have and also have no problem with. One can disagree so long as they're aware of that fact.
There is some "justice" involved, in that say Milhaud's film-music is embarrassingly inferior to Herrmann's or William's, whereas his 2nd violin concerto defecates on William's own. They're just two different areas of artistic endeavour, with minor similarities.
d) Aren't feminist musicologists the saddest and most hilarious bunch? I've also had to read articles and journals of the like... Well, Beethoven just should have known better back in 1803, and not just scribble what crap came naturally to him then. Obviously not a sensitive, caring guy... [:P]
I believe I have provoked enough people for one post so I'll just leave it there.
P.S.: Deconstructionism is the punchline of the worst philosophical joke, and there's no way I am going to write a diatribe to defend that!