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.  It does take more mental energy
than Metallica, that is certain.

>Prokofiev's Alex Nevsky??

I confess am not so familiar with this piece.

>How hard is this stuff?

La Sacre was sufficiently difficult for enough people that there was a riot
at the premiere.:)

>>Not only is the more refined more cerebral, taking more effort to grasp....
>
>I taught music from K-8th grade.  Children from K to 5th adored CM,
>from Bach to Ligeti.  From 6th to 8th, boys started to dislike it.
>By your observation, shouldn't it be the other way around?

Many lengthy discussions on this list seem to stem from semantics.  I
suspect that often people arguing will fail to realize that essentially
they agree with each other, but rather, they will argue because they use
different words.  Or even they'll agree that they agree, but disagree on
the words!  Intelligence is too vague a term; I was focusing on limited
particular aspects of intelligence as I perceive it, among them
receptiveness to new ideas.  Children as a group tend to possess this
quality to a greater extent than adults as a group, in my opinion.

>Don't feel bad.  My good friend, (a Cal Poly grad), upon seeing how
>happy I was to find Prokofiev's War and Peace used, said, "I wish I could
>understand and get as much enjoyment out of what you listen to.  What's
>that opera about?" Completely unaware of the delicious irony of the my
>answer, I said, "Well, peace....and, uh, war."

Well, the majority of people aren't into Tolstoy, either.  I submit that
it's not the ideas that they struggle with so much a challenging medium,
such as opera, or a thick novel (often awkwardly translated)that isn't
just cheap thrills from one page to the next.  (And I don't feel bad.):)

>The enjoyment of CM doesn't require intelligence, it requires
>vulnerability.  But I'm banging my head against the wall with this one.

The thrust of my post was intended to be to admonish all of us to encourage
this vulnerability.  And bravo for your teaching.:)

Michael