David Bringen <[log in to unmask]> reply to my post is not
inconsistent, but rather expands, on the issues from another angle.  Unless
we educate people in the arts, especially the musical arts, it's not likely
that classical music will be part of a growing industry.  This may be
obvious, but it bears repeating.  Yet, the comments:

>You don't dumb down or smarten up any art.  The composer wrote it, the
>performer realized it, the listener heard it, each in keeping with his
>or her own readiness to communicate.  You like it or you don't; all an
>education will do is give you more words in which to express your
>reactions.

while true, misses a salient point.  If one attempts to square a circle or
circle a square, the results will be apriori abysmal.  Narrating a concert
is such an endeavor, alienating the educated, and doing little to help the
uneducated.  Perhaps our symphonies can do educational programs a la
Bernstein, not as a staple, but as augmentation.  I learned a great deal
from watching Bernstein in my early years.  Cartoons probably did the most
for classical music, albeit in hardly a classical manner.  But we needn't
import cartoons into the symphony hall in order to communicate the merits
of classical music.  Education, by all means, but not within the
performance by narrators.  Let the paper musical program do the education.

Classical music, from the listener's point of view, requires nothing impede
its momentum.  Anything that detracts from the listener's enjoyment is
deleterious to the survival of the medium.  Auditory cross-signals are
just such distractions.  I've adumbrated others in my original post.

Where I think Vroon and I agree is in the cultural wars.  Not the cultural
wars of the politicos, but of the mass-marketed television that is the
single, largest contributor to the education of today's youth and adults.
It's shameless that so much hyperactivity and sensory assaults have become
normative, such that, when it comes to the contemplation of classical
music, individuals are predisposed to dislike the medium before the event
begins.  Hyperkinetictivity is the enemy of the classical music listener.
If we can't allow ourselves and children time to embrace silence in order
t appreciate sound, all out efforts at education on the formal level will
be for nought.  All our major institutions fight it out in the arena of
hyperkinetivity -- to see who can cram the most auditory signals in a
single second.  How can classical music compete with such ubiquitous
distractions? Television is the most obvious culprit, but the blame can
be widely distributed to all who follow its methods.

Mutatis mutandis, reading literature.  Complex forms of literature are
also becoming something of the past, with simple microcosmic worlds
replacing intricate themes, plot, and characters.  The quick story off
the supermarket rack succeeds proportionately as the skills to read more
intricate literature becomes strictly an academic exercise.  And the
culprit is largely "time," the lack of which denies us the opportunity
to learn the skills of reading great literature or listening to great
classical works.  So, while education is certainly a significant component
in the dumbing down of classical music, it is the hurried rush of time that
is the greatest threat to the threat to our more sophisticated means of
liesure.

As Matthew Arnold wrote, "this strange disease of modern life, With its
sick hurry, its divided aims." This is the diagnosis that continues, even
more virulently, nearly a century later.

[log in to unmask] (D. Stephen Heersink)