A future of fads, and constantly fading beauty

I was at a dinner party* and the composer was a big fan of emphasizing experiential universals and (therefore) universal reactions to music and (therefore) an argument for universal beauty, or at least universal communication through music. By universal I mean human, but all humans. Builtin. I'm more moderate than all that, and lean towards more relativism, but I was listening.

One assumption he was making was that The Greats have lasted because they are beautiful, because of their strength and universal appeal. He expressed doubt that any art or music made in recent years will weather the centuries that the late great composers have.

A confound occurred to me, one worth investigating (and possibly investigable). Institutions carry ideas and traditions through generations. There is no arguing that this will be a factor (in addition to beauty) that carries art forward through generations and lends a sense of universality and concensus. Lost artists would be artists that got dropped by institutions and found, later, by research. Presumably such work only 'speaks' to later cultures.

This culture is seeing an interesting trend. Large institutions get larger. Since any institution, large and small, can only carry a finite (and small) number of cultural artifacts forward as canonical, the number of cultural artifacts carried forward by large institutions will be small relative to the number of artifacts and the number of artifacts carried forward by small institutions. I will put my focus on the role of small institutions in carrying work forward.

Individuals are more empowered than ever before. Small institutions are gaining an larger stake/share in selecting the contents of collective conciousness. But small institutions don't last. They have limited power to carry cultural artifacts through the vast stretches of time necessary to lend such work an air of universal appeal.

*note to self

Look up Howie the composer (red sneakers) and Anna Willieme