Steve Schwartz wrote:

>I prefer to blame audience laziness, guilt, and resentment.

I understand Steve's position, but I can't go with it very far.  Most
concert goers are looking for entertainment and find much contemporary
music alien, hard to focus on, and not entertaining.  I'm not going to
blame them for seeking only entertainment in a familiar packaging.  That's
their right, and classical music is not a particularly strong force in
their lives.

About a year ago, my wife and I visted her mother in Miami.  One evening
her mom had over most of her current friends, and they were talking about
the recent opera performances they had seen and those to come during the
season.

They groused quite a bit concerning a contemporary opera they attended.  I
asked them if all they wanted to attend were performances of operas where
the music was in a familiar style.  Their general answer was that they were
not going to allocate "fixed income" monies to horrible music.  What about
non-operatic works? They also wanted none of that.  What's the point of
blaming them for their perferences or thinking less of them? They do
support classical music and that's not very prevalent.

Contemporary composers can write to satify their own standards and goals,
to satisfy the general classical music audience, or some combination of the
two.  Which route they take is their business.  But, there's little value
in not accepting the audience as it is.  Unfortunately, i find little vlaue
in the music which is written to satisfy audiences.

Don Satz
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