Juozas Rimas wrote:

>A classical music lover switching to pop is almost unimaginable for me,
>although the opposite happens quite often.  The content, emotion,
>complexity of classical music leave pop absolutely bland.

I was raised on rock and roll (mostly punk {which is why I'm a Mahler
fan now:) } and other esoteric and 'advant garde' stuff), and never liked
'pop' or soft rock.  At 32 I discovered Beethoven and never turned back.
Although I'll listen to an occasional XTC cd here and there (and still
quite enjoy it when I do), there is absolutely nothing I believe in this
century that can come close to comparing with that wondrous and most
amazing 200 year period of (mostly) German/Austrian music that we now call
classical music.  To be fair though, this body of music represents one of
the greatest artistic heights in Western civilization- can we really expect
such a thing to be sustained?

I think modern jazz is very very good though.  Charlie Parker et al.
Fusion jazz suffers along with all other forms of contemporary music from
country to soul though from the one factor that I hate the most in music:
commercialization.

Philip Harding
Fukuoka, Japan