Classical Music as Relics for easy listening

A question which emerges from your discussion: has the homogenization and stagnancy occurred because radio and public performance are no longer the ways in which music is heard? Is it possible that music via the cd has become the dominant form of music distribution?

To reiterate... buy or just borrow at the library all of John Williams' film soundtracks and you will discover hours upon hours of complex, melodic, and well orchestrated symphonic classical music. It is right there for anyone to listen to. Many in the classical crowd snub John solely because it was composed for movies.

John Williams has composed some straight classical that has been recorded. There is a cello concerto and other cello suites with Yo-Yo Ma that I've seen in the stores. I guess I should put my money where my mouth is and buy it.

Remember.. most of Leonard Berstein's music that is played regularly is concert versions of his show music. His "classical" music is mostly forgotten.

I highly recommend Christopher Rouse Symphony No.2 on Telarc (1994) Houston Symphony/Eschenbach. Also has a flute concerto and a small piece.

The list we have made of other modern composers is made up mostly of people connected with Universities, or groups that pay them whether they produce anything worth listening to or not. This is one reason most of it is bad. If they all had to compose music that would sell commerically or they'd starve to death, we would have more to listen to.

The most recent "dead" composer worth buying is Shostakovich who died in 1975. Now yes, he was in a socialist country, but he was under pressure to compose stuff Stalin liked, or lose his family and go to a work camp Siberia. Now that's motivation.

With any luck as hardware improves, bandwidth increases/becomes cheaper, more internat'l web radio stations will emerge better serving specialist niches, *,+,^ - doubtless, others will know of better sources

Rock died when Kurt Cobain died, he took the spirit of rock with him; JUST MY OPINION.

News: There have been nine Symphony orchestras that closed their doors this season. The lastest is the South Florida Symphony. The Average age of someone who subscribes to a
season for a symphony orchestra has risen from 52 in 1982 to 59 in 2002. Unless something dramatic happens within 25 years there will be only a dozen or so professional orchestras left. I do not think it is pricing, because it costs just as much to go see the Rolling Stones as it does
the Philadelphia Orchestra. In fact the local Newark,DE Symphony puts on a very reasonable production for very little cost. The kids are no longer exposed to classical music , old or otherwise. Music is no longer required in high school(because of budgets) or college (because of the de-emphasis of a liberal arts education). Maybe I should be thankful there is ANY classical music on the radio, bad or otherwise.

BTW: I just picked up two new CDs: Bechara El-Khoury, a Naxos production from their new series: 21st century composers. And Gyorgy Ligeti's string quartets, freely chromatic in the Bartok style.(Sony production).