Michael replies to me: >John replied to me: > >>Rite of Spring is refined? > >Oh my absolutely. Of course it is. > >And yes it often SOUNDS savage, but... it's never going to be for >everyone. For a variety of reasons. I think many people, including myself, try to explain CM's limited appeal by pointing out its so-called essential, forbidding qualities such as "intellectuality," and "refinement." This would be fine if CM elicited the same response in people over time, culture, and gender. But it doesn't. The Rite of Spring, once considered by some to be so barbaric and primitive as to be offensive, is sometimes seen now as highbrow and therefore a "hard nut to crack." The march, once used to heat the blood of fightin' men, is now a siren-song for up and coming band geeks. Some opera was once so potent as to be considered morally and politically dangerous, now it's the butt of jokes on Frasier. Prokofiev's music is lumped together with the fine arts and yet he dumbed his aesthetic down, among other things, to accommodate the supposed intellectual capacity of The People. It's all so relative. *If* Billy Joel really said that music needs to be rescued from the pretentious, etc. then I'm really surprised. Talk about the poodle calling the hair-dresser gay. I know some people that consider *his* music to be pretentious and maudlin; something to assessorize one's IKEA furniture with. If we really want to problem-solve, and figure out why CM's audience is so limited, I think it would be a better idea to identify the *meanings* and *associations* that the uninitiated derive when hearing CM or observing the kind of people who listen to CM. And if such meanings and associations are irreconcilable with the uninitiated's necessary comportment or culture--leading to his dismissal of CM--then it's important to lay those meanings and associations bare. The origins of stereotypical associations are easy to pin down; finding the origins of CM's contemporary meaning within our culture is harder. Why do some people consider CM forbiddingly intellectual and refined? I submit: How many generations of captive or curious music students have watched teachers, (including myself), act as midwives to the appreciation of "art music," by peeling apart its staff like a quintuple helix--especially when explaining and justifying the music of the serialists, etc.--to reveal, compare and contrast the intellectual rigor rather than just letting the sensual delights stand on their own? (It's easier to discuss technique than it is to discuss aesthetic beauty!) Could endless comparisons of technique, from the simple to the complex, have unintentionally created a hierarchy of aesthetic "blessedness" in the minds of the uninitiated? Art, Fine Art and the Finest Art? (The last not to be looked at directely.) Steve Schwartz in a recent review of Mahler's 7th: >...almost every performance of the Seventh I heard seemed to miss the >point, although I had no idea what that point was. This is what I'm kind of talking about. Have we led the uninitiated to believe that art has to have a point to be "fine?" The fantastically imaginative "moonlight music" of the 1st mov't and those great fanfares of the finale have always been reason enough for me to enjoy the music without having had any evidence of salutary cohesion. Could you have enjoyed these moments without having worked to find the point, or justification? Should other people? This is why, IMHO, the casual reader or listener thinks listening to CM requires work and drudgery. A picture's worth a thousand words. Look at Billy Joel's album cover--the cover with which he heralds his entry into world of the "Finest Art"--the most voluptuous, sensual, poetic, volatile, emotional, and compelling world we know-- At first glance, I thought someone had recorded the Hanon Studies. John Smyth