What's been the last big new thing in music/style?

[Bob]

I've heard music history "recentness" is the last fifty years. 

The last big thing I'm thinking of is something with serialization.  1950s, 1960s.

Has anything new happened since then?

[themeandvariation]

Hi…
Well the 60's saw a confluence of the avant-garde in two threads.. 'modern' classical and Jazz.. Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, continuing with H. Threadgill  (who I like a lot…"too much ammonia" there was 'musique concrete' , electronic experiments (Subtonik being a great example), minimalism , starting with Riley's 'in C' , cont'd  with Reich, Glass, Adams.. and scores of others in varying degrees...*(Adams has done a wonderful suite of piano pieces call 'Phrygian Gates' - .. a great contribution, considering that the piano has lost it's center stage status it once had with composers..) a continuing of the complexity started by Schoenberg, which was further explored.. (Boulez, E. Carter -whose string quartets are fantastic) Ferneyhough, Babbitt, Stockhausen,  many others… There is 'space' music (like in empty) like Eno's 'thursday afternoon', … Toro Takemitzu …. Oh I should throw in there the incredible Etudes for Piano of Ligeti … Also of course, the chance music of Cage, Feldman, ...Carl Stone's electronic experiments with the electronic surreal.  Then the return to and refashioning of older forms - Arvo Part, Golijov , Alan Silvestri… And those who push the bounds in film music… John Corigliano - "Altered States"….  
(Also, somewhere in there was this mov't of "The return of melody"…  in the late 70's)

[thalbergmad]

You have "Plinkism" which started about 1906 and is still going.

Thal

[themeandvariation]

"plinkism"  you mean like Henry Cowell?

My previous post, the off the top of my head summary … is just only that…
But if one had to whittle it to down to the 'last big new thing' … i'd have to say: Minimalism

[chopinlover01]

Latest in music?
Autotune and dubstep.

[josh93248]

Latest in music?
Autotune and dubstep.

Unfortunately I think Chopinlover is right, that is the music that has gained TRACTION as far as most people are concerned. It's a shame modern music in the classical stream has gotten so removed from audiences. Whatever happened to the days classical music would be listened to side by side with popular stuff and be appreciated by the average punter? Experimentalism and originality for their own sake have, I think, taken over too much, a return to a more 19th century style with some modernisation in ways that might be more inviting to the non-classical audience, may be the way forward.