Comparing composers, musicians and singers from before the year 1900 to those after 2000, has modern technology erased the need for true

No, I don't think it does at all.

What counts is how the developments are used, and 'twere ever so.

It is true that you can at least partially mask lack of genuine talent with, for example, pitch-correctors, artificial reverberation and sampling; but if treated properly most other new inventions add to the aural pallet available to composers. They always did.

Many of the so-called, and indeed actual, Classical composers were not slow in exploiting newly-invented instruments and improvements to existing ones. I think it was Haydn, for example, who wrote a concerto for the inventor of the new-fangled valved trumpet.

I believe Richard Wagner went one better, by inventing a variant of the horn to give a particular timbre to some of his operatic parts.

In the 20C, the development of good-quality amplification meant music-hall and cabaret singers no longer had to bawl their heads off, but sing in a natural voice. This was paralleled by improving studio equipment and recording quality. Bing Crosby was an early exponent of these.

Les Paul invented the electric guitar to overcome the quietness problem of the acoustic guitar when used in the rhythm section of jazz bands, in noisy bars and night-clubs. He was a session musician and I have heard some discreet but very tasty playing from him, backing the named performer, a female crooner (I forget her name but I think she was actually Mrs. Paul) bathed in that style's saccharine drippyness.

The electric guitar of course emerged from the back line of the jazz- and swing- band to become synonymous with rock and pop, but it now also attracts the attention of composers of much deeper music; as does its bass companion.

The jazz traditions had introduced the saxophone, the mutes used by the brass players, and the drum-kit including the Charleston Pedal (later called the 'high-hat'). Those drummers so advanced their art that Buddy Rich wrote an entire book on playing the snare-drum alone, with "rudiments" (rhythm elements) bearing strange names like 'Triple Flam Paradiddle'*. I didn't get that far, but will say the first few of over 100 pages of exercises were devoted to reading music properly. Even if he called them things like "quarter notes" rather than the time-honoured, proper names! 

And what of Andrew Moog's Synthesiser, Monsieur Martenot's "Ondes", and that Russian chap Theramin's totally-eponymous invention? Those three electronic instruments, the first two using piano-type keyboards, all require their particular skills to play to a worthwhile level including symphonic music, as has been proven many times.  

Even if we reflect pre-20C instrumental conventions but in styles of our time and even avant-garde; the talent is very much there in the composers and performers of all the orchestral, chamber, choral, solo and operatic works being written now.

How much will survive a century and more hence, no-one can tell, but that too has always been the question, as fashions change. For example, J.S. Bach's fugues are as popular now as they were when new; but un-fashionable for quite a while after his death.

So fear not Randy D. Equipment evolves, and styles should and do change over time; but new, good, original music as well as performances of existing, by highly-talented writers, players and singers, is alive and indeed thriving! 


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* Triple Flam Paradiddle... I think it's a paradiddle containing three flams. Actually, I think to most of the audience it would sound like an ordinary, but slightly irregular, drum-roll limited in 4/4 time to one bar length. Now you know as much as I do about them!