Shubertmaniac, I take your thoughtful question very seriously and have no answers. Here nevertheless a couple of strewn remarks:
While I see Sugarbrie's point regarding "small scale" -- to Flex's list I would also add Krzysztof Penderecki and György Kurtág (say, String Quartets) --, I would suggest that some of the temporally short works, or even "studies", for ex., those of Anton Webern, Alban Berg, are the antithesis of much of (bad) pop music (all repetition, no information, little of interest going on, except reiteration of some groove with a hook): compression, concentration, difficulty. To be sure, many of these short works are, initially, not melodic, but that is not the point; they create their own rythmic and tonal structures against our natural expectations.*
Rather than the commercial purveyors of music -- or even radio --, I check in from time to time into the best-stocked university-town library I can find, or, better yet, a department of musicology (with literally archival tons of vinyl). Usually I arrive with some hand-scribbled notes which have been gathering dust over time on the proverbial back-burner and leave with even more freshly scribbled notes which I then use, among other things, to guide music acquisition. The process of discovery is a bit of a trial --one has to "make time" and be a bit systematic (however) -- but is invariably highly rewarding.
While I see Sugarbrie's point regarding "small scale" -- to Flex's list I would also add Krzysztof Penderecki and György Kurtág (say, String Quartets) --, I would suggest that some of the temporally short works, or even "studies", for ex., those of Anton Webern, Alban Berg, are the antithesis of much of (bad) pop music (all repetition, no information, little of interest going on, except reiteration of some groove with a hook): compression, concentration, difficulty. To be sure, many of these short works are, initially, not melodic, but that is not the point; they create their own rythmic and tonal structures against our natural expectations.*
Rather than the commercial purveyors of music -- or even radio --, I check in from time to time into the best-stocked university-town library I can find, or, better yet, a department of musicology (with literally archival tons of vinyl). Usually I arrive with some hand-scribbled notes which have been gathering dust over time on the proverbial back-burner and leave with even more freshly scribbled notes which I then use, among other things, to guide music acquisition. The process of discovery is a bit of a trial --one has to "make time" and be a bit systematic (however) -- but is invariably highly rewarding.