There  has been an ongoing argument in both the Times and the Guardian about the viability and relevence of contemporary music. I believe one of the biggest failings of modern classical music is that nobody writes music for people to play for fun. In classical times the chamber music of Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert was mostly written to commission by aristocrats to play in their houses for fun, not for performance at

public concerts. Personally I never now go to concerts and only PLAY music other than occasionally watching big musical performances

when they are broadcast on TV. Therefore from this point of view the issue of size of audiences does not really relate to the health of musical culture.

I would define a healthy musical culture as one in which people are writing and playing music, not sitting in silent rows having music played AT them.

I have even been told by a composer that only difficult music played by excellent professional ensembles was worthwhile!

So my objections to contemporary music is that it is self indulgent, impractical and unrewarding to play. So many pieces seem to rely on gimmickry and lack any real musical substance. I heard the TV broadcast of 'The Minotaur' , discussed in the Guardian article, and rather than being offended by any of the notes written I thought it was okay  but really just an ordinary piece of modernism, and

 he effect really needed all the trappings of the production and story rather

than the music grabbing you on its own terms, unlike music where you have no option but to have it playing in your head all the next day.

(This happened the first time I heard the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra as a teenager, and frequently happens when forgotten masterpieces are resurrected in recordings.)

A serious problem of modern composers is that they do not have big enough litter bins. It seems as though everything which is written gets presented to the public without any filtering process for good or bad.

The composers of the past who had great facility like Mozart or Sebastian Bach presumably discarded a great deal of substandard imagined music in their heads almost instantaneously so that what was came out of their pens was of high quality. It is clear from Beethoven's sketches, which  are always longer than the final version of the piece, that there was a great deal of polishing, reorganizing and wholesale changing going on in the process of composition.

There is an organization aimed at promoting contemporary music for amateurs, but even this is obsessed with concerts, and their summer-school is aimed at the goal of a final course concert, rather than the fun of music.

So my appeal to composers would be, come up with music which can be played for fun, in a normal house, and has enough musical content to stand alone without any gimmickry like fancy spacings, theatrical gestures

or extremes of dynamics. Good luck.