Frank Wales replies to me: >>How many people in the entire country have read even someone as well >>known as Galway Kinnell or Anna Akhmatova? > >At the risk of appearing to be a philistine: who? > >>How many people have seen a painting by David Hockney or >>Julian Freud, let alone Turner or Constable? > >Well, I've seen numerous works by all of the above. Does this >compensate for me not knowing who Kinnell or Akhmatova are? Philistinism doesn't necessarily enter into it. The point is, why should we be surprised that not a lot of even college-educated people know classical music, when a lot of college-educated people don't know serious art of any kind (and the "college-educated" part is simply a shorthand way of indicating possibilities of exposure)? Why is classical music singled out as a special case? I picked names at random, all considered by *somebody*, at least, significant artists, with lots of books written by them and about them readily available. And yet ... I don't know the reason for this, so I hate to suggest one. Nevertheless, while I find Allan Kozinn's points intriguing (I think this is how we got on this in the first place), I can't say I agree with the general rosy tone of the article. To me, the health of a culture is related to who's making the money from the art. Artists had better be among those. If there are a lot of small independent record labels doing interesting things, do they make money at it? I know at least one terrific small label that is run as a good deed by its owners. Without the ability to get a return on investment and time, how long can this state of affairs last? Obviously, there's not much of a market, so whence Kozinn's joy? Steve Schwartz