Bernard Chasan:

>Classical music is unpopular because it requires an attention
>span and a commitment.  This makes the enterprise sound
>like an unpleasant exercise, but for many people that is precisely
>what it is.  It also requires some sense of history.  It is
>not a now kind of thing.

Clearly this at the heart of things, but just how is CM not 'now'? I think
there was once a realization that literature of some depth, like CM or any
paradigms of the other arts, required some attention and, as you put it,
commitment.  Esterhazys and Razumovskys were once needed to support CM --
an expensive undertaking that the local taverns would never fund -- and
the audience had to attend more or less closely to the proceedings.

It's also always required some considerable time and effort of
acculturation to gain that historical perspective you mention.  What
serious writer in the west, before the 20th century, would dare take pen
to paper before making the effort to get familiar with the tradition:
Homer and the Bible, the Greeks and Shakespeare, Moliere, Calderon de
la Barca or Cervantes, etc?

This is no longer so.  The good things in life, goes the current wisdom,
can be had without struggle, and all have equal access to the Truth and
Beauty and Wisdom.  In fact, we needn't capitalize those terms, 'cause it's
all relative.  Christianity brought with it its own gravediggers, as
Nietzsche said with his usual prescience.

>I think too that the classical music Community does very little real
>outreach, and most of us either do not give a hoot about spreading the
>word or do not have a clue as to how it can be done, if indeed it can be
>done.

Oh, I don't know; I suspect most of us on MCML are pretty overt about our
enthusiasm/obsession.  Surely _your_ friends know you as a CM weirdo...
Then again:  prosletyzers? I'm not sure:  *must* we?

I think more damage is probably done when corporate types no longer regard
it as prestigious to support CM orchestras, etc.  It's lost snob appeal,
the cache it once had.  This, too, results from the anti-intellectual drift
Deryk sees in North America -- which I consider a more global tectonic
shift, if delayed abroad, and a function of modernism, or the
democratization or levelling I referred to above.

CM's now on a par with other causes and avocations -- lacrosse, rugby,
heart institute fund-raising, etc.  -- and a matter of public prestige
only for a very few.  As one often hears on MCML:  Much as we may prefer
him, Stravinsky's no better than Ian Dury, objectively speaking.  In
short, as Rodney Dangerfield (a US comedian) might put it, adjusting an
ill-fitting tie:  "Ligeti gets no respect."

>Public school music education is increasingly seen as a frill, and
>that may be contributing.

Agreed, like the reduced presence of CM on radio in the US in particular,
from what I gather.  Both deadly 'contributions.'

>...Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen are very popular.  They communicate
>with their audience in a manner which seems to be beyond the powers- maybe
>beyond the aspirations of "classical" composers.  It is as if classical
>contemporary music demands an entrance fee of intellectual commitment
>and attention span

Certainly; and the qualification "contemporary" is superfluous, afaic.
But weren't popular musicians always more, er, popular, and didn't
those presumably higher endeavours always call for some kind of deeper
commitment? Borges, Plato, Brancusi, Beethoven, Dante, Goethe ...all of
these require some concentration, so don't provide the immediacy of contact
that most popular artists seem to have, enabling them to connect.

No doubt a lot of snobbish rubbish went out the window with the trashing
of distinctions between High and Low, between what requires intellectual
commitment and what gets our feet a'tapping; but maybe something was also
lost.  Certainly the snob appeal that would rope in the moneyed; maybe also
those who'd want something less transient than just good 3-minute tunes?

Then again, I'm having no difficulty finding plenty of cm on CDs.  I don't
live in Montreal or New York, but even so there's plenty of CM to witness
in person around here.  Also, in Canada, Europe and Australia/NZ there's
plenty to be had on the radio ...and, significantly, it's not just from
CDs, but taped *live* concerts.

So, as long as there are enough people to sustain this obsession, I don't
much care if it's not popular with average joes and lucindas.

Mind you, I'm not unsympathetic.  In fact, I'm convinced that the number of
CM lovers could be much, much larger if there was an ethos of -- how'd you
put it? -- attention and commitment.  Unfortunately, from what I've seen,
the trend's in the other direction.

Bert Bailey, in Ottawa