"Modern" has three meanings in this context: #1. Contemporary. #2. The Modernist movement of the mid-20th Century. #3. A self-conscious break with the past and a search for new forms of expression (which is what the Moderninsts did, and is what we continue to do today). New music. Composed, shaped and sculpted. This category does not contain improvised music, but will include some "experimental" music in the sense of John Cage's use of the word, that the outcome is not fixed.