There is much excitement about Paul McCartney's attempts at writing
classical music.  "Who needs it?" was one of the responses.

This is the Problem of the Age:  Now that we have digitally recorded music,
who needs any new music anymore?

Do we need new composers writing new music? I for one really don't!  ;-)

(1) I haven't heard all the works by composers whose work I really admire
(and from whom I can expect music that I hope to admire in the future).

(2) Do we want to encourage new composers to make *them* happy, or to make
*ourselves* happy?

Of course, on those rare occasions on which I have heard new composers,
at least half the time I like what I hear.  But there are so *many* new
composers!  If I get to hear them, good.  If I don't, that's good, too.
But I don't *need* them.

One of the big problems I see with encouraging classical music is that it
creates desires within young breasts of wanting to create new classical
music.  With the classics, the model for classical music being music
written in times gone by, there is an expectation that one is composing for
posterity.  It is art.  (The first composer who thought he was writing for
posterity, I suspect, is Beethoven.) With popular music, one simply wants
to sell a record.  It is journalism.  In my mind, journalism is a more
reasonable aspiration than art.  With the huge number of musicians and
composers out there, any composer should be satisfied with no more than one
performance of his or her work.  A recording? Ha ha!  Dream on; you should
be so lucky.

I love Paul MacCartney's writing, especially with Lennon.  I own most of
the Beatles' important recordings.  I play them all the time.  But I don't
plan to buy his classical music unless I hear a huge roar of enthusiasm
about his compositions from classical mainstreamers.

For instance, I recently heard Rautavaara's Cantus Arcticus.  I think
I'd like to own a recording of it.  I heard Wagner's Wessendonck lieder.
I'd like to own a recording of that, too (unfortunately, the new 1992
orchestration is supposedly out of print, according to the young fellow at
the DC Tower Records, whither I hied as soon as I got to DC last weekend).
I'm not going to listen to any McCartney voluntarily.  Who needs it?

If my point isn't perfectly clear to you good readers, let me tell you:  it
isn't clear to me, either.  I don't know how to *think about* new composers
and new music, but I certainly know what to *do*:  leave them alone, until
they come looking for you.  (And a sexy CD cover helps very little.)

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