Ah, the semiotics of music pedagogy. Having just waded through a lot of material on another application of that science, I can confidently predict that it can be expressed in a few clear statements, or at extreme rambling length. May we hope for the former? :-)

Wow, Gary!

I am certain you could receive at least as many insightful answers to this inquiry as there are frustrated composers and arrangers. I shall use up more than my single vote, and cite two: [1] Lack of Audience, and [2] Lack of Performance Opportunities; and they are enter-twined in sort of a the-chicken-or-the-egg relationship.

Many years ago, when I still believed I had something meaningful to say, I wanted to compose for orchestra. Inside of me I heard big, complex sounds, that needed to come out. I shall not bore anyone with the tedious details. Had I been a professor at a conservatory, like Adler or Schnittke, or Schuman or Persichetti, or Husa, I would have both my chance of an acceptable performance, and a (possibly receptive?) audience. Lacking both, the unfinished manuscript collects dust. With VERY few exceptions, symphony orchestras perform what will fill the seats in the concert hall, OR sell a few CDs, and that is B, B, and B, with an occasional Mahler or (dare I mention?) Bartok thrown in.

Ah - I’ll compromise, and write for a smaller group - at the other extreme - a string quartet. I wrote a couple of movements, personally paid the principal chairs from the local symphony to rehearse and perform, personally paid for the recording session. Not big, complex sounds, yet it was a pretty nice piece. But like any one of the Bartok quartets, quite inaccessible to the casual listener. So here the incomplete manuscript, and its cassette tape, collects dust. When was the last time that anyone on this Forum listened to a modern string quartet (other than Kronos)?

Finally a “break”! The director of a regional band contacts me, and together we apply for, and I am awarded, a commission from the New York Council of the Arts, for a piece for band. (Big sound, maybe not quite as complex.) I write it, AND copy all the parts, ultimately making $ 0.0257 per hour, but that is beside the point. Changing meters, and shifting tonal centers, required a lot of time at rehearsals. It was premiered at a summer concert. I think that everyone, including the players, was hoping for a nice march! Throw that manuscript on the pile.

I could go on. We are at a tough juncture with skilled composers (I do not presume to include myself in this group), and their audiences. This applies to jazz as well as “serious” genre. CHICKEN: By definition, composers (other than for film) have little desire to write what has already been written. The creative urge is to break new musical ground, even if it is simply evolutionary. EGG: More than ever, the audience is reluctant to “do any work” toward understanding more complex sounds or structures. As you hint toward, most audiences want it to be short, and to not engage their ears or their emotions at a deep level. Even further, the performing musicians themselves, while technically masterful, seem reluctant to invest themselves in fully projecting “new music”. And finally, perhaps the conductor is unsure of his footing, but would never admit it!

Forgive the personal references - I am certain I rambled too.
Ed

When I made my first stab at music history not long ago, I went through a book that gave an interesting overview. You get the Renaissance Man era, where every person of nobility, these also being patrons of the arts, had to be well versed in those arts - amateurs in the good sense of the word. Then nobility and church lost their power and role, and music had to go for public consumption. At that point (so said the author) things had to be made popular, and at least some composers and musicians ended up living in two worlds. There was the consumable music they had to produce in order to make a living, and what they did in private to satisfy the creativity and the abilities that they had at an expert level to do more.

It has gotten worse and more extreme. Everything everywhere is popularized, dummied down. As we, the public, get exposed to less and less, our awareness of what exists and what can be also goes down. For some it creates a restlessness and hunger, like with a steady diet of candy floss. It is not just in terms of entertainment. Try to get an education, try to study anything anywhere, and it has been pragmatized, simplified, "made interesting" in a commercial definition of "interesting".

So how can we end up hearing or playing this kind of music? How can those who want what composer, performers, or teachers have to offer get together with those offering it, and circumvent this homogenization that seems to be happening everywhere?

I dunno. Rossini and Wagner made a pretty good living writing for Warner Bros, but I guess you could argue much of that stuff is less than complex.

When I saw "semiotics", the first thing that flashed in my mind was "semi-idiotic".

We may hope for the former, but we are doomed to be very disappointed.