John Detwiler wrote:

>If anyone has any thoughts on how to make CM "cool," I think we could get
>some good ideas going.  I'll add some of my own next time (if a thread
>actually gets started.)

Well I just skimmed this post but it started a thought in my fuddled brain.
That thought is:  maybe we should ask ourselves "what payoff were the
audiences of the 18th and 19th centuries getting from the music that we
today call "classical" that we as a society don't?"

Granted that the CM lovers of today (as I suggested in a previous post) MAY
not be hearing the music in quite the same way as those who heard it when
it was written.  There is such a thing as Zeitgeist and ours is different
from theirs.  So in some way the music then was the exponent of the time,
which is certainly not the case now.  But then we won't ever know for sure
exactly how our forbears' neurons were spinning around to the tunes--maybe
they were experiencing much the same thing we do now, who love this music.
What has changed is perhaps the percentage of people who are familiar with
the music, and who have taken the time to learn its secrets.

Back then there weren't so many distractions like TV and ubiquitous "pop"
music, sports, etc.  A concert was a first-class way to break out of the
daily routine.  It was also an emblem of the finest in culture and
entertainment, even then.  It was an EVENT.

Chris Bonds