Iskender Savasir asks:

>>What I have in mind is esp.  the prejudice (excuse the term) against
>>"cross over".  Would people care to expound on what is wrong with
>>"cross over" or "fusion"?

Nothing in itself is wrong with either concept per se, to me simply
another subset of "universal."

The question is the quality of the works produced.  I've heard wonderful
crossover: Rifkin's "Baroque Beatles Book" comes to mind.  Charles Ives
and George Gershwin did fusion and crossover.  I'm a fan of both.

I think what people object to is the stuff that doesn't work, but I don't
think that's due to the concept, rather to the lack of talent of people
who put out junk.

On the other hand, why should a work of art appeal to everybody?  There's
a lot of hand-wringing over the "elitism" of classical music, but you
can find elitists guarding the purity of every kind of music.  I've not
seen as virulent an elitism as that which infests jazz.  Rock critics
aren't immune from sniffs, God knows.

I was reading an anecdote about Gunter Wand.  At the premiere of
Zimmermann's Symphony in One Movement, he immediately repeated the work
(it lasts about fifteen minutes).  Some people walked out -- it was a
"difficult" modern score -- and one wrote to the local paper to complain
that Wand's decision was "undemocratic." Wand replied dryly that at most
only 15% of the audience had left, still a hefty majority.

I've long ago concluded that just as "fascist" was a Sixties' synonym
for "someone I don't agree with," so "elitist" is a synonym for "I don't
like that."

Steve Schwartz

             ***********************************************
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