Bernard Chasan replies to me:

>... on the other hand, the rise of recorded technology makes everything
>available.  including old music which is not often heard.  ...  As for the
>size of the classical music audience, I am reminded of a remark made by
>the novelist Phillip Roth a few years ago.  He estimated that the American
>public for serious new fiction consisted of about 60,000 people.

It's wonderful, but it has come at a price.  I think it's a price, on the
whole, worth paying, but can it be reduced?

As for the 60,000 readers of serious new fiction, that could easily be
58,000 more than the regular listeners of new music.  Furthermore and
unfortunately, new music has become pretty much a clique, as Boulez's
recent remarks on His Place in History seem to confirm.  I happen to like
Boulez's music, but I'm less than thrilled with him as gatekeeper to the
Temple of Art.  I'm even less thrilled with the building itself.  At any
rate, new music doesn't seem to matter not only to the general public, but
to the general "intellectual" or educated public.  On the other hand, I
hear Don Delillo's name on Charlie Rose (U.S.  current cultural thermometer
- what's hot/what's not) about 50% of the time I tune in.

Steve Schwartz