An observation about "Modern" classical music.

Lousyreeds1...I hate to sound so negative, but I do see the nature of "modern" and "new" music to be a problem. MOST modern music I should add. There is some new work that is OK. I agree that people like Levine should support current composers. My complaint is what the composers do with that support. Why can't they compose in an idiom that is more widely appreciated?

You mention that it is customary to mix old and new music in a program. Let me point out another fact for consideration...when some new composition appears along with the Beethoven symphony, which one goes first? The new piece, always. People will sit through it so as to hear Beethoven, but if Beethoven went first the hall would be half empty after intermission.

Music seems to be the only venture where the customer is not always right.

Indeed, the new piece always comes first, usually for exactly the reason you specify. The idea is that people generally aren't open to new things, and sometimes you have to give them a bit of incentive to stay. Sometimes the audience is glad they sat through it. Sometimes the discussions during intermission are full of eye rolls and sighs. It just depends.

Think of all the composers who refused to write in a manner that would be 'pleasing' to their intended audiences or patrons. Mozart, Beethoven, Debussy, Satie, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and there are many more. If they had always been forced to pander to someone else's expectations, we would be stuck with a bunch of Salieris and Atwoods. No fun at all.

"Music seems to be the only venture where the customer is not always right," you say.

Your treatment of music as a commodity to be purchased rather than as an art to be experienced scares me. Just give the new work a chance. Worst case, you left feeling nothing, but you've seen a little bit of someone else's creative soul. Go up and ask the composer what he was thinking when he wrote his piece, and why it was so weird. If it's new enough, he's probably sitting in the audience.

You're going to tell me that whether we like it or not, music as it is in the 21st century is a commodity, and it had better realize that or die. I think we had better realize that music is not a commodity. Otherwise, it will die whether or not it incorporates new music. Playing nothing but the classics won't save classical music. Incorporating them with the dynamism of new music and getting the audiences excited about it might help.

"To listen can be an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also."-Igor Stravinsky.

Eldartford, I'm very sympathetic to your feelings about 'modern' music, which you may have gathered from my previous post. They was a lot of crap purveyed in the last 50 years that shouldn't have seen the light of day, and perhaps a better screening process should have been effected by the conductors. I would even suggest that the prolifferation of that stuff did more to empty concert calls than to fill them. HOWEVER, we do risk never hearing music that is new and worthwhile, as for example, The Rites of Spring, absolutely hated at its premier more because it was new, not understood, not traditional, not melodic, ad infinitum, but has now taken its place as one of our century's important works. Who is to judge?

Let me be very clear that I agree with the sentiment that there's a whole lot of crap floating around out there that, as Newbee says, shouldn't have seen the light of day. But let's also keep in mind that every period of classical music, of any music for that matter, has produced its fair share of crap. The ratio of great composers to mediocre ones is no higher or lower now than it ever has been. History will eventually separate the wheat from the chaff. In the mean time, I enjoy hearing everything I can and making that decision for myself on my own terms.

Stravinski was right, being a duck is the norm. The new stuff doesn't come to you, you have to go to it. There's always something to learn in order to get it when an artform pushes into a new area. Varese probably won't be on anyone's top 40 after a first listen. A little humility and attentivness often pays off when you feel blindsided... Who was that dumb ass who gave Miles Davis/On The Corner, or Zappa's Bongo Fury 2.5 stars in Downbeat?