Steve Schwartz writes:

>I believe that mass-marketing and recording technologies have affected
>musical and other artistic tastes, including the tastes of the
>college-degreed.  Only a bunch of fanatics care about classical music,
>"hard art," or "hard lit" in the first place.

In discussions such as this I always refer back to Phillip Roth's estimate
that there are 60,000 serious readers of novels in the country.  Who knows,
really? And I wonder to what degree classical music, and Steve's "hard art"
and "hard lit" enjoyed broader support in the past than they do now.  My
impression is that Dickens was enormously popular as people waited for
the next installment to appear, but I have no idea whether or not that
popularity crossed class lines, and (of course!!) literacy lines.  It may
be, that with a few exceptions (Italian opera comes to mind) classical
music has always been the domain of a relatively small coterie.  It is said
that Haydn's London Symphonies were wildly popular when he presented them
in London.  Wildly popular among a small group, or the public at large? I
seek enlightenment.

Professor Bernard Chasan
Physics Department, Boston University