The War on Music unlocks the mystery of why classical music seemingly produced so few eternal works after 1950, whereas other arts—popular music, Broadway, literature, painting, architecture, theater, cinema—have given the world myriad beloved and highly regarded masterpieces; why the composers considered the future of classical music in the 1920s disappeared from being performed after World War II; why the most heard symphonic scores of the century—music for Hollywood films—became the subject of brutal denigration and dismissal; why the avant-garde of the pre-World War I became the new lingua franca of the Cold War period in the West, and any music that veered from its requirements removed from being performed.