Walter Meyer wrote:

>As Romain Rolland had his hero, Jean-Christophe, consider, as he lies dying
>at the end of the novel of the same name, which first appeared about 1910:
>
>"He saw clearly...how surely all modern music was doomed to destruction.
>More quickly than any other the language of music is consumed by its
>own heat; at the end of a century or two it is understood only by a
>few initiates.  For how many do Monteverdi and Lully still exist?"

My dad's old college music book from the 50s was about the same, in that it
mentioned Monteverdi, but there were no recordings mentioned (there may not
have been any at the time) nor lines from his works reproduced in it.  It
was just a distant name back then, with a noted but unheard influence on
later generations.

Nowadays, a look through the Schwann catalog or its equivalent should
answer the question that Rolland asked earlier in the century, and I
daresay the numbers are a lot higher for M.  and Lully than for Rolland.

Let's check back in a hundred years or so and see if anything's changed...

Bill H.