Bill Pirkle writes:

>But I think that its fair to say that more CM types enjoy the music of the
>18th & 19th centuries that they do the 20th century's music.  If you were
>stranded on a desert island with only one century's music, would you choose
>the 19th or the 20th century? For me, most modern music is like most modern
>art - interesting but not profound.

To answer the personal question first, I'd firmly choose the 20th century.
For sheer stylistic variety, generic range and quality there are simply too
many composers of too many nationalities I just could not be without.

I'm quite sure, as Bill Pirkle says, I'd be in a minority.  I'm equally
sure this proves nothing.

How many so-called CM aficionados really listen to music? To speak
cynically, it's easier to let Mozart or Beethoven wash pleasantly over the
half-listener than it is Martinu or Bartok.  How many half-listeners use
music - as we all do at times I fear (I've got "The Protecting Veil" going
on pleasantly in the background as I write this) - as glorified aural
wallpaper? It's easier to use Brahms than Britten for this sort of purpose,
and inevitably the soothing stuff becomes familiar, and in time beloved.

Then again, as a Church of England choirboy my earliest musical revelations
were not German B's but (a) the English Elizabethans, (b) Purcell and
Handel, and (c) the great neo-Elizabethans such as Britten, Tippett,
Howells, Rubbra, Bax, Williamson, Matthias ... so these groups were my
first, and remain my greatest loves.  I didn't listen to much Beethoven, or
start to see what he was getting at, until I was rather older - by which
time I had a pretty fair overview of what my own century had to offer.

In other words, it's a question of upbringing rather than one of
comparative merit.  And I do find the use of the P word ("not profound")
to justify personal taste unhelpful, even where it's as gently brandished
as here by Bill Pirkle.  Would it not be better to speak of "love"?

What is this bugaboo "profundity"? I do not know, though I do know
something about being moved, stimulated and inspired by music.

To take an example, a comparison between how Janacek's "Intimate Letters"
and Beethoven Op.95 String Quartets work might be wholly revealing and
worthwhile, but qualitative judgement would be pointless at this level of
achievement.  To say one is more "profound" than the other is meaningless,
and I wonder what, if anything, might be served by it?

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"