Leon Le Leu wrote:

>Now I think of it I was played the moving 'Gethsemane at Dawn', the
>fantastic organ piece by Paul Paviour, to my son in the car.  I commented:
>"Listen to those wonderful dissonances." My son agreed they were pretty
>fantastic then made the interesting comment that he thought adults only
>liked "pretty" music and not dissonances.  So that opens out another
>area of consideration; teenagers think we adults are a race apart in our
>appreciation of music.  There is lack of understanding on both sides.

I'd agree with this, in part.  So much modern pop music is based on the
notion of "darkness" that many younger listeners have a much more immediate
connection to minor-key, dissonant and outright atonal music than they
do to more consonant and tonal composition.  That's true for me, at
least.  Penderecki's "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima" hit me with
the force of revelation the first time I heard it, and my connection to
it is deep and vital -- not at all intellectual.  Whereas my appreciation
of Beethoven's Fifth or Ninth is much more heady and much less visceral.

>So what are my conclusions?
>
>*  One cannot force classical music into the young.

This part I agree with wholeheartedly.

>*  It must be introduced by stealth.
>
>*  They cannot be made to feel as though they are being put through a
>wholesome, educational experience otherwise they will switch right off.

You have just described the entire edifice of modern youth-targeted
marketing in outline, and the sad fact is that the kids / young adults
today are so wise to this strategy it might as well be completely
transparent to them.  When writers as diverse as Neal Stephenson and Tom
Wolfe have lampooned the earnest efforts of those with good intentions
to sell whatever idea they're trying to get across (sexual abstinence,
avoiding drug ab/use, mainstream Christianity) as very sensitive to, and
skeptical of, stealth marketing nowadays.

>*  Motion pictures represent the most effective way to do it without
>their being aware of it.

This part I also agree with without reservation.  I would never have
developed such a deep fondness for Ligeti's mechanical music and his
opera "Le Grand Macabre" if I hadn't been exposed to his otherworldly
vocal works via Stanley Kubrick and _2001: A Space Odyssey_ first, and
at a tender age.  In fact, it's hard to overstate the influence that
movie's soundtrack had on me.  Ligeti owes a debt to Stanley Kubrick he
probably doesn't even recognize, much less acknowledge.

Forrest L Norvell