Jocelyn Wang wrote:

>Does anyone-- anyone-- in his right mind, regardless of his view of atonal
>"music," actually believe that such an experience would have been enjoyed
>by a single one of those kids?

Yes I certainly do, and as I understand from other postings concerning
this subject (also see Peter Ludins post in the Copland thread) also others
on this list do.  Gawain has an interesting story, full of knights, kings
and fays...I would guess thats quite appalling to children.  Secondly
Birtwistle is *not* an atonal composer!  He belongs to the same school as
Maxwell-Davis, Goehr or Colin Matthews who compose complex but mostly tonal
music (I think I have read somewhere Birtwistles music being described as
post-romantic....).  Did Mrs.  Wang ever listen to Gawain or any other work
by Birtwistle?

>Please.  Child abuse is rampant enough without subjecting them en masse to
>that.

Come on, you would consider the exposure of children to contemporary music
as child abuse??????

John Deacon wrote:

>The question, which is more or less self-evident - for those who know the
>years of listening experience that needs to be brought to this (dreadful)
>stuff in order to survive it (and I'm not there yet and probably never will
>be!) was "that it would put them off opera for life."

I went to the opera with my school class (I was around 14).  We had the
usual Humperdink and Mozart stuff.  Now maybe that put me off opera - I do
not know yet if for life - and I still do not like this kind of musical
approach.  Maybe if we had seen Ligetis Grand Macabre it would have been
different!

>Kids need guidance.  Even mis-guided guidance is better than Gawain.

Yes kids need guidance, but rather in a way to offer them several
opportunities.  Thus one should go with them to Gawain and Haensel und
Gretel.  Maybe for them there is not so much difference in these works than
John seems to see.

Achim Breiling