Help - Verbal please ( 3 Blanker)

That today’s students of American culture tend to (i) _________ classical music is understandable. In our own time, America’s musical high culture has degenerated into a formulaic entertainment divorced from the contemporary moment. Thus, to miss out on what our orchestras are up to is not to (ii) _________ much. In the late Gilded Age, however, music was widely esteemed as the “queen of the arts.” Classical music was in its American heyday, (iii) _________ the culture at large.

problem :- I was solving it via time contrast and failed to identify the contrasting pair which is highlighted,
rather I contrasted That today with, ** In our own time ** is it not contrasting, please explain me who is it spoken by or which time is it denoting and why ?

tqs.