Steve Schwartz writes:

>The point is that, again, no piece of music that I know of is the sure
>indicator of Perfect Taste.  We react to art differently as we react
>to food differently.

Received Canon is to Perfect Taste as a canon of Canterbury cathedral is
to a French Seventyfive.  You, of course, are free to consider the RC of
classical music in execrable taste, but the RC it is.  You may accept its
received taste or reject it.  Perfection no longer exists.  Correctness
nowadays is relativization.

>I don't see why I'm to spend my life within the confines of what I already
>know. Discovery is a pleasure.

The Received Canon in classical music is at most only as exclusive as
is the canon of the bible.  You're free to listen and enjoy Nono just as
you're free to read the Apocrypha--or John leCarre.  But if you want to
know the Christian or Jewish scriptures you're really obliged to get to
know the canon.

Denis Fodor