Musical "Progress"

The progression of music has always depended on rebellion. Bach was not popular in his life because his music bended so many rules of counterpoint to an extent that just was not understood then. It took years of study and discovery to truly see how unbelievably sophisticated, incredibly genius his music is. Even today, musicians are baffled by the mind of J.S. Bach. Beethoven's 9th and the Grosse Fugue, as well as his late piano sonatas are all pieces that explore such rebellious ways of thinking about music. Wildly new, wildly fresh, incredibly different, and against so many preconceived notions about music. While the 9th and the Sonatas still fall neatly into the tonal system, there are problems of neatness in the Grosse Fugue. Not only its length, its "form", and its sound, but also its color and meaning. Years later, with Wagner (who practically makes a tonal piece that breaks tonality), and Debussy (who actually writes many atonal pieces that sound tonal, and sound atonal, and uses parallel fifths as much as a fat kid uses a knife and fork), the rules of music start breaking. We get different purposes for music, different sounds that are excepted and scoffed at simultaneously, pieces with incredible length and weird proportions.
Eventually, we get the biggest rule broken ever: the break of tonality with Schoenberg (although, it technically happened already - Schoenberg's Op. 11, however, was the first that had "that sound" to it), and a whole new way of writing music (the 12-tone system, although Bach has a fugue whose subject uses all twelve tones, there was another 12-tone system developed by J. Matthias Hauer [before Schoenberg] that did not catch fire, and Ives [born at the same time as Schoenberg] wrote 'Tone Roads' before Schoenberg did his 12-tone work). What could people do after that? Serialism - extreme control. Complexity - extreme density. Minimalism - extreme nothingness. Electroacoustic music - extreme redefinition. Mixed into that, there are people like Feldman, who write extreme nothingness pieces mixed with extreme length. Or Cage, whose music is more a musical representation of diverse philosophies rather than compositions. We get people like Xenakis using mathematical formulas to write pieces. Set theory happens. Allen Forte happens. It seems like after the tonality rule was broken, there were really no more rules to break that would seem as jarring or surprising as that. At least in the "Classical" world.
Pop was experiencing something completely different. Jazz started to pick up the atonality vibe, and eventually birthed Charles Mingus, and a whole mess of cats trying to follow him. Minimalism as well as Stockhausen influenced Kraftwerk to make the first electronic pop pieces. This births techno, which births disco, house, dance, trance, progressive house, ambient, jungle, drum & bass, and somewhere out of this comes hip hop, which turns into gangsta rap, etc... Disco has a hand in motown and neo-R&B(as well as swing, doowop/bebop, jazz and blues, and gospel, the last of which is a mixture of so many different types of music, but with a religious purpose. Mahalia Jackson had a big hand in this cross-fertilization.) And I can't even begin to start to summarize what's going on in the rest of the world . . . (which is always left out, BUT musics of African [west Africa for Ligeti and Reich], India [Terry Reiley, who practically becomes only a Raga musician], and Asia [gamelan music influence extends as far back as Debussy with his piece "Pagodes"] seep its way into these other musics)
So, here we are today. What rules do we have to break? And if we break them, would they really matter? As a composer, I have come across many different ways of teaching composition to my generation as well as to the younger generation, and I have heard some pretty amazing and pretty dispicable stories of certain composition teachers saying certain things. I often come across students who have incredible pieces, but the notation is not proper, and the composer does not know how to fix it. Or I know students who do not know how to use notation software, and end up using their lack of knowledge as an excuse. But, with so much going on in music in general, I understand why trivial things like notation software usages might fall in the cracks. I personally admit to not knowing enough about spectral music, music of the new complexity, musics of other cultures, and jazz. I just recently became interested in Shona music of Zimbabwe, particularly the use of the Mbira, which is commonly known in the states as the thumb piano. At any rate, there is so much for composers to know, and for composition teachers to teach, that it seems like there are no rules left to break.
But there has to be. This feeling has always existed. Beethoven definitely felt it. Schoenberg felt it. And now we're feeling it. There has to be a way to overcome this feeling, and change the course of music. Or at least add another tong to the giant fork of music. Pozzi Escot says that no matter how much you feel like you can not discover anything more, there is always something new to be discovered. But the world today is so full - packed to the brim and overflowing with things to do, places to see, people to meet, ideas to share, languages to master, foods to taste, alcohols to drink, stuff to make and discover and experience . . . Life is full! We all experience it differently, and this can be affirmed with music, as well as other things. In music, though, there will always be another way to go. Us musicians must simply find the yellow brick road.