Jeff Dunn wrote: >Karl Miller wonders: > >>Is Kozzin right telling us that the >>situation with classical music is great? > >and then provokes us with a "where are the good old days?" film article. Well, I guess I just don't know who is right about things. As for the film music...for me, the notion of melody is...difficult. For me, the term "melody" can be highly subjective. I rather prefer the notion of the "idea." Much of what I hear with film composers and the "fluff" concert music composers is gesture without substance. It is a bit like so many of the motion pictures of today...visual effects tied together by very little story line. As for the state of classical music, during a discussion over lunch on Saturday I was informed that at our University, the Music School, by a narrow margin, has decided to give commercial music more of a place in the curriculum. The rationale, as expressed to me was, that they decided the curriculum needed to be more in alignment with student interests. Of course one can go on about the notion is the customer always right...and is a student just a customer. As the story was relayed to me, it seems that the reason for this shift of emphasis came from an influx of Yale graduates who joined our faculty. According to what I was told, Yale is a leader in the thinking of keeping the curriculum relevant to students. For me, something as fundamental as education, which is usually behind the times, can serve as a barometer for the future. It would seem that the future is, at the least, cloudy. Again, I wonder if it just isn't my becoming part of greying America or what...but it does seem to me that "the times they are a changing" a bit quicker than I can recall in my readings of history. While doing some research, I was looking over some bits of broadcast history. Some of the classical music broadcast highlights for the first week of 1938...from the New York Times... 2 Jan 1938 Ravel Memorial Concert-WJZ Symphony concert with Kirsten and Karen Flagstad, sopranos...and the quarrel scene from Julius Caesar with Orson Welles and Martin Gable-WJZ New York Philharmonic, Barbirolli with Elman-WABC Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air-WJZ Symphony Orchestra, Ezio Pinza bass, with Eugene Ormandy, conductor-WABC Symphony Orchestra, Adele Marcus, piano with Alexander Smallens, conductor-WEAF This was at a time when there was no "public broadcasting." Can you imagine a concert of the Philadelphia Orchestra on CBS these days? One can argue that "it costs too much." Could it cost too much because the advertizers think that they would not get enough bang for their buck? Thinking about Mr. Kozinn's article (by the way he is the author of a book about the Beatles), I believe it is very difficult to really say if classical music is losing ground. However, as I look around at things like the changing interests of our music department...our library favoring the cataloging of commercial recordings of popular music, versus the preservation of unique Stokowski performances, the changing trends in "classical" broadcasting, the dumbing down of repertoire, the more popular composers of "classical" music writing what I find to be insipid drivel...Torke to name a name...the changing emphasis in music education ...the marketing of classical music...etc. Jeff...I hope you are right and I am wrong... Karl