I have been following this thread with a great deal of interest, and it
seems to me that one aspect of this question that has been neglected is
memory.

We are living in the nostaligia-marketing era: Beatles reissues, baseball
card collecting, the return of disco (God help us), TV-Land reruns, etc.
The thing that this kind of marketing thrives on is, of course, memory.
We derive memories of youth, at least for the purposes of the advertisers,
primarily from two sources: our home/school life, and memories of the
media of our youth.  While those that came of age two generations ago may
have had memories--from both their home life (78s, parents' enthusiasm)
and from the media (radio, newsreels)--of Toscanini, Caruso, Schnabel,
Rachmaninov, etc., most of us coming of age now have no essential memories
of Classical Music.

I am lucky; my father loved CM and took me to concerts at a _very_ young
age.  Of course I discovered rock 'n' roll in my teenage years, but now
it is the memories of those times with my parents and listening to LPs of
George Szell and Bernstein that have provided a foundation for my present
enthusiasm.  I do not mean to suggest that it is impossible for someone to
discover CM later in life, but it is perhaps a more difficult and unusual
journey.

Most people my age have no idea who Robert Schumann was because their
parents did not know and the media did not tell them; I was the weird kid
with a poster of Beethoven on my wall.

End of ramble.

John Halbrooks