Forwarded to me by a friend...

Excerpted from John von Rhein's recent blog on Arts Journal:

   Being reasonably conversant with classical music, its traditions
   and history used to be considered one of the marks of an
   educated person.  No longer.  (Just try asking any self-styled
   intellectual you meet socially to name a few living classical
   composers.) How can we even begin to expect audiences to "get"
   new music if they're so poorly educated in (hence indifferent
   to) music that even the standard repertory is like this exotic
   foreign tongue to them?  No wonder our symphony orchestras
   are going in for spoon-feeding them.  Daniel Barenboim said
   it best: "Music has lost a large part of its place in society."
   Full stop.

I guess most of us would agree with this perspective?

However, I wonder if our concept of an educated person is different from
what it might have been some 40 years ago.

Where are people going to be exposed to the range of art music.  Certainly
not on NPR, or PBS...or in the concert hall, or in school.  Where should
they be exposed to art music?

Once again I am reminded of the notion of dumbing down art music so it
will attract new listeners.  I wonder, how many years has that notion
be applied to programming concerts and the media, and is there any
evidence that it has accomplished any good?

Karl