In Canberra, a senate inquiry into the Commonwealth’s new national cultural policy – Revive: a place for every story, a story for every place – has received wide-ranging submissions from industry and stakeholders whose insights expose significant gaps in the policy’s framework.

There is, however, no submission offered by any institution or lobby group that chiefly represents Australian art music composers. Indeed, this is but symptomatic of a broader fact: in this country, authentic composers face a number of challenges.

An authentic composer armours his relentless pursuit for knowledge in honesty. He explores the past and discerns his findings from the present, closely studying what relationships exist between the historical and the contemporary.

The future concerns him less. He is as reluctant to force innovation upon his work as he is to succumb to imitation. Rather, quality is of chief importance to him. He understands the very real distinction between what constitutes craft and what constitutes style. He recognises, and fears, how his extra-musical inspirations might so easily morph into crutches. He is neither island nor barcode; it is responsible individualism that beats in his heart.

It is little wonder, then, that such composers are at a disadvantage today. The extra-musical has indeed usurped art’s primacy. Whereas authentic composers place far greater weight on the work they produce, the work of any composer is now judged as if it was some pale reflection of their biological or social identities.

Things like skin colours, sexuality, gender, political views and financial situations now directly affect whose music is supported and whose is not. Composers satisfying these extra-musical criteria are commissioned, funded, performed and publicised, while authentic composers are deliberately ignored. Insidiously, this discrimination is perpetuated not just by the general public but by those within the arts who should know better.

I have never been able to work out just what motivates this approach. The legacy of postmodernity is that feelings now supersede truths; a crisis of critical thought, in conjunction with humanity’s rampant need for material gain, could certainly be behind things.

But my current inclination is that it is, in fact, the anxiety of loss, itself both material and social, that drives this malaise. The vast majority of creatives seek affection; they fear ostracisation and abhor accusations of elitism levelled against them. These insecurities can be, and have been, militarised against authentic voices to devastating effect.

Motivations aside, there are consequences to prioritising artists’ identity above artworks’ quality. The first is that, perhaps obviously, quality artwork disappears.

Australia is home to many an authentic composer, including but not at all limited to Brenton Broadstock, Barry Conyngham, Don Kay and Peter Tahourdin. Quality works by these composers are seldom, if ever, heard in our concert halls today, presumably because they are the contributions of old, white men (with Tahourdin so old that he is, actually, dead).

Leonard Bernstein once said of Julian Yu, “You f***ing genius!” – but when was the last time a domestic symphony orchestra ennobled itself with the music of this great Australian? We have done a poor job of preserving our musical giants. Peter Sculthorpe, Malcolm Williamson and Alfred Hill should all be household names, but are not.

When quality work is diminished, lesser work takes its place, and this has given rise to a number of interesting phenomenon. The prescriptive, rambling program note, in which composers subordinate their music to language, is one example. Compositions of a purely musical nature – or, at least, compositions that subordinate their narrative themes to their craft and style – are now taboo.

The employ of commercial orchestrators by some concert hall composers is equally disturbing. The great, authentic composers of the past could never have conceived that, in today’s world, celebrity-type figures would secretly turn to mercenaries for hire to complete their scores. If the full list of those who indulged in this deceptive practise was revealed, audiences would be shocked.

There can be no genuine increase in widespread demand for art music, let alone Australian art music, until fine arts education is radically overhauled. Classroom music, in terms of both its curriculum and the calibre of its teaching, is in a lamentable state.  Growing numbers of grade 12 elective students cannot read nor play music.

As for tertiary music education, the destruction of Australia’s independent conservatoriums through their incorporation into the universities, courtesy of the Dawkins Revolution, has proved a national tragedy.

The projection of academia upon music, a discipline that at its core is a discipline of craft, not research, has serviced no one. Talented musicians retreat to Britain, Europe or America for their studies, as if it were the 1950s again.

The ever-constricting university bubble has also enabled a wily class of composers, financially empowered through their tenured professorships but largely unknown beyond lecture theatres. This offers little satisfaction to the Australian people, whose taxes fund music that they are, in the most disappointing of cases, never exposed to. Indeed, the taxpayer’s burden might be subsidised if a genuine culture of arts philanthropy was ever to take off.

All of this, without even discussing artificial intelligence – though my belief is that the human spirit and, indeed, the insatiable need to express humanity through art shall always triumph over the robot.

In order to begin combatting these challenges, authentic composers must join forces. The very first steps must be to collectively champion quality, decry identity and reform education. I firmly believe that the situation is salvageable and that we should look with optimism towards tomorrow.

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Indeed, in Australia, we are on the cusp of a renaissance. But good people must stand up, unapologetically, and campaign for the base principle that has propelled western music throughout the ages: that the true artist is, and always will be, and must be, lesser than his art.

Alexander Voltz is a Brisbane writer and composer.