Christopher Webber ...

>To answer the personal question first, I'd firmly choose the 20th century.
>For sheer stylistic variety, generic range and quality there are simply too
>many composers of too many nationalities I just could not be without.
>
>I'm quite sure, as Bill Pirkle says, I'd be in a minority.  I'm equally
>sure this proves nothing.

I do think that you would be in the minority but I would make no value
judgment about your choice.  It would be your lonelyness to abate any way
you like.

>And I do find the use of the P word ("not profound") to justify personal
>taste unhelpful, even where it's as gently brandished as here by Bill
>Pirkle.  Would it not be better to speak of "love"?

I was referring to my personal opinion of the modern stuff as being
interesting but not profound.  Is it OK with you that I describe music that
I like as profound and other music as interesting [to me]? - Webster
PROFOUND 1) having intellectual depth and insight 2) difficult to fathom or
understand 3) extending far below the surface.

Curiously, I find far more expressions of love in 19th century music than
the 20th, and I would want to be stuck on a desert island with the 19th,
that and the world's greatest shipbuilder.

Bill Pirkle