I’d say that was nothing but an academic interpretation of historical circumstances you couldn’t possibly know but, I had a head-on collision with the ‘expectations of the period’. At the end of 8th grade I applied to a conservatory...I don’t know why as I didn’t expect to be accepted but I was...and ended up being tortured the next two years.
I don’t know - or even care- what “serious music” is like today but back then form over function was the single driving force and any consonance was dismissed out of hand. A “prestigious” one-week workshop with that idiot stoner Phillip Glass was the last straw. I dropped out, never stepped-foot in a classroom again and stopped writing until around the age of 21.
When I started again my academic experience coupled with having been horribly abused as a child left me unwilling to allow anyone (except a few close friends) hear or see anything I wrote. Up until around the age of 38, I threw away pretty much everything just after finishing it. It was around then a friend realized what I was doing and made it pretty clear he’d kick my ass if he caught me tossing anymore music. So I stopped, again.
Functionally computer coding is no different than music composition so, my profession satisfies me. Serious music can go to hell.
I sometimes wonder how much music we never heard because of situations like mine.
It’s historical fact that contemporaries of the time were actively promoting and writing about. Rousseau called for the ‘abolition of counterpoint’.