I am not plugged into a community of musicians these days, but in college and the decade afterwards we were hearing, performing music written by contemporary composers. Choral music, mostly. But cello concertos, crazy harpsichord binges, and banging on drums were there, too.
A "Classical vernacular" these days would be blockbuster movie soundtracks! Are you (the article, its author) telling me that doesn't matter?
To say nothing of new venues and art forms. I learned about Christopher Tin's song cycles via a soundtrack bundle marketed to video gamers. I am not a gamer, but I think I was shopping for a gift for my kids and holy cow I love his work.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IJiHDmyhE1A
Eric Whitacre! Arvo Pärt!
These are not obscure artists.
Symphonies and opera houses perform fun and popular works during the summer season in the US. So now would be a good time to find stuff you might not expect.
So happy I got to sing, as a student, along in a huge group anchored by Tõnu Kaljuste's Estonian Chaber Chorus. Popular conductor Eri Klas was very patient, loved working with students, and I am forever grateful.
Here are some examples of mostly extant classical composers whose works that require either the human voice or few instruments beyond it. I think that these are both appreciated by classical music aficionados and music critics, and I have sung every one of them in a "recent" (mostly pre-covid) concert:
– Ēriks Ešenvalds, a Latvian composer – e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh09QDoJMMg
– Tõnu Kõrvits, an Estonian composer – in this piece of music he echoes another famous Estonian composer, Cyrillus Kreek (d. 1962) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yETJdX5r80U
– Franz Biebl (died 2001), a German composer – e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41KBZsdC2dw
– Rihards Dubra, a(nother) lovely Latvian composer – e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28NzGYAvsoQ
– Vytautas Miškinis, an excellent Lithuanian composer (b. 1954) – e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBGoPpebOkA
– Andrej Makor, a Slovenian composer – e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYsMU_tc7uU
– Moses Hogan (died 2003), a composer from the southern US, where gospel stretches the definition of "classical" a little bit but to excellent results – e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b-d-JsQhzI
– Vaclovas Augustinas, yet another excellent Lithuanian composer – I LOVE Tykus Tykus (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G8DZD7IFZs)
I think I'll stop here, but this is just a list of the lesser known contemporary famous classical composers in the variety of classical music that I like. The "actually famous" ones – Eric Whitacre, John Rutter, Arvo Pärt, Gabriel Jackson, Cecilla McDowell, Ola Gjeilo etc., or even people like Christopher Tin (who wrote the excellent Baba Yetu, which I think many HN readers / fans of Civ 4 might recall [1]) – have massive followings and, to my ear at least, compose interesting, harmonic and often frankly beautiful music.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCa8RxaOPW8