Michael replies to me:

>John replied to me:
>
>>Rite of Spring is refined?
>
>Oh my absolutely.  Of course it is.
>
>And yes it often SOUNDS savage, but...  it's never going to be for
>everyone.  For a variety of reasons.

I think many people, including myself, try to explain CM's limited appeal
by pointing out its so-called essential, forbidding qualities such as
"intellectuality," and "refinement." This would be fine if CM elicited the
same response in people over time, culture, and gender.  But it doesn't.

The Rite of Spring, once considered by some to be so barbaric and primitive
as to be offensive, is sometimes seen now as highbrow and therefore a "hard
nut to crack." The march, once used to heat the blood of fightin' men, is
now a siren-song for up and coming band geeks.  Some opera was once so
potent as to be considered morally and politically dangerous, now it's the
butt of jokes on Frasier.  Prokofiev's music is lumped together with the
fine arts and yet he dumbed his aesthetic down, among other things, to
accommodate the supposed intellectual capacity of The People.

It's all so relative.  *If* Billy Joel really said that music needs to be
rescued from the pretentious, etc.  then I'm really surprised.  Talk about
the poodle calling the hair-dresser gay.  I know some people that consider
*his* music to be pretentious and maudlin; something to assessorize one's
IKEA furniture with.

If we really want to problem-solve, and figure out why CM's audience is so
limited, I think it would be a better idea to identify the *meanings* and
*associations* that the uninitiated derive when hearing CM or observing
the kind of people who listen to CM.  And if such meanings and associations
are irreconcilable with the uninitiated's necessary comportment or
culture--leading to his dismissal of CM--then it's important to lay those
meanings and associations bare.

The origins of stereotypical associations are easy to pin down; finding the
origins of CM's contemporary meaning within our culture is harder.

Why do some people consider CM forbiddingly intellectual and refined?
I submit:  How many generations of captive or curious music students
have watched teachers, (including myself), act as midwives to the
appreciation of "art music," by peeling apart its staff like a quintuple
helix--especially when explaining and justifying the music of the
serialists, etc.--to reveal, compare and contrast the intellectual rigor
rather than just letting the sensual delights stand on their own? (It's
easier to discuss technique than it is to discuss aesthetic beauty!) Could
endless comparisons of technique, from the simple to the complex, have
unintentionally created a hierarchy of aesthetic "blessedness" in the minds
of the uninitiated? Art, Fine Art and the Finest Art? (The last not to be
looked at directely.)

Steve Schwartz in a recent review of Mahler's 7th:

>...almost every performance of the Seventh I heard seemed to miss the
>point, although I had no idea what that point was.

This is what I'm kind of talking about.

Have we led the uninitiated to believe that art has to have a point to be
"fine?" The fantastically imaginative "moonlight music" of the 1st mov't
and those great fanfares of the finale have always been reason enough for
me to enjoy the music without having had any evidence of salutary cohesion.
Could you have enjoyed these moments without having worked to find the
point, or justification? Should other people?

This is why, IMHO, the casual reader or listener thinks listening to CM
requires work and drudgery.

A picture's worth a thousand words.  Look at Billy Joel's album cover--the
cover with which he heralds his entry into world of the "Finest Art"--the
most voluptuous, sensual, poetic, volatile, emotional, and compelling world
we know--

At first glance, I thought someone had recorded the Hanon Studies.

John Smyth