Changes in West­ern atti­tudes toward high art music and devel­op­ments in inter­net music tech­nol­ogy in the twenty-first cen­tury have chal­lenged the tra­di­tional values of avant-garde com­posers; they will there­fore need to adapt accord­ingly. I exam­ine these adap­ta­tions by trac­ing the devel­op­ment of one common avant-garde belief: the belief that cer­tain kinds of music have unique cul­tural value that others lack.

I begin by look­ing at the ways in which avant-garde com­posers during the Cold War were able to gain polit­i­cal sup­port for the idea that their music pos­sessed an inher­ent supe­ri­or­ity (cul­tural high­ness). I then dis­cuss the fail­ure of this model in the early 1990s, as well as alter­na­tive strate­gies devel­oped to fill the gap left by the end of the Cold War and chang­ing cul­tural atti­tudes toward high art. I pro­pose that these new strate­gies ulti­mately fail as well, because inter­net music tech­nol­ogy has destroyed any pos­si­bil­ity for unique cul­tural value within music and re-situated this value in the indi­vid­ual listener’s per­spec­tive. Ideas of cul­tural high­ness there­fore become unten­able, and I end with sev­eral exam­ples of how com­posers today are adapt­ing their values and behav­iour as a result.