Steve Schwartz says that few people in the United States -- even
college-degreed> people -- listen to classical music at all.  Well,
I can firmly state that even fewer do so in my own country, but what
is the reason for this?  Most people recognize the Household names
(Beethoven, Mozart, etc.) but they dont know anything about their music,
and even less about 20th century composers (Like Elliot Carter) This is
a sad state of affairs, but it si probably due to the fact that classical
music is viewed by most people as something "elitist" and difficult,
perhaps more efforts should be done to bring music "down" to the level
of the common man, avoiding some of the strange "isms" that pervaded
modern music and drove many would be aficionados away from it.

PS: Went to "La Fille du Regiment" at the Metropolitan Opera a few days
ago.  Juan Diego Florez has got to be the greatest liric tenor in many
years.

Julio Ponce de Leon
Bogota, Colombia

             ***********************************************
The CLASSICAL mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R)
list management software together with L-Soft's HDMail High Deliverability
Mailer for reliable, lightning fast mail delivery.  For more information,
go to:  http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html