Albie replies to me:

>>This implies that there are basic pieces and later you state outright
>>that if you don't know these pieces, you don't know classical music at
>>all.  I'm sorry, but no piece of music is absolutely indispensible to an
>>understanding of the art, not even Bach's Goldbergs.  The only thing that
>>truly guides anyone is one's own taste.  The rest is mainly advertising
>>with snob appeal.  My suggestion to the writer is to find out what her
>>taste is, as opposed to my taste or your taste.
>
>I think what's worrying me, though, is the possibility of what I think
>of as "reverse" snobbery...  The possible notion that "Oh!...  Rich people
>who don't really like Classical music just show up at *same-old-same-old*
>concerts of Mozart or Beethoven just to look cultured...  but you really
>*must* know and like classical music if you listen to Webern or
>Schoenberg."

i see no advantage to "looking cultured." It strikes me as a pathetic waste
of time.  I've never advocated that everybody like Schoenberg and Webern
in order to pass some weird test of Culture.  I've mainly suggested that
people listen to what they enjoy.  I enjoy pieces by Schoenberg and Webern.
I'm enthusiastic.  I recommend these pieces in the hope that someone else
enjoys them as well, just as I recommend "beautiful" works by Vaughan
Williams, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Stravinsky, and so on.

>I'm worried that some might be going into that area of classical music
>just to play the part of the *super-DUPER intellectual* even among the
>mere *super intellectuals* that listen to the more standard repertoire.

Snobbery plagues art all along the spectrum of familiar/unfamiliar.  Some
people deny you entrance to their particular Temple of Art because you
don't like Babbitt, others because you don't like Brahms.  In either case,
it strikes me as foolish.  When you come right down to it, does one listen
to what one enjoys or to what someone says you should enjoy? You can't
please everybody, so you might as well please yourself.

>Surely, if you like the new stuff, go for it...  it's just that I think
>it's harder to actually *truly* like the new stuff than it is the older
>stuff...  a lot more hit-or-miss...

Again, it comes down to the individual.  I used to think I was a freak
because of how I got to know the repertoire (the first two pieces of
classical music I ever heard were Bach's English Suite No.  2 and Debussy's
Second Arabesque -- how's that for range?), but I find that others came to
it exactly the same way -- to the music from Haydn through Sibelius last.
Along the way, I discovered great musicians (like Britten, Stravinsky,
Schnabel, Vaughan Williams) who disliked the music of this or that bust in
the Pantheon.  I concluded that people aren't hard-wired to appreciate a
particular list of music, that the listener takes a chance, even with Bach,
on liking or disliking a piece, and either result doesn't necessarily show
an intellectual or moral failing.

>at least with the older stuff, we are more familiar with it...  more
>comfortable...  and from that safety one can reach out and explore.

Well, you could also use the adjectives "boring" and "predictable." I
certainly felt that way, though I do no longer.  You start with what you
like, with what makes sense, with what strikes a thrilling response, and
you keep exploring.  You also re-examine stuff you've previously rejected
every once in a while, because, one very great pleasure of an intelligent
being is changing one's mind, of arriving at a new, tranforming viewpoint.

Steve Schwartz