Classical Music as Relics for easy listening

I think it more insidious than just Borders and B&N. At least they have a classical music section, limited as it maybe; I did get my Naxos CDs of Schnittke and Part at Borders. But it started much earlier than that. It really began when Toscannini became a cult god and his worshippers bowed to his whims. He only conducted the warhorses at the NY Philharmonic. He conducted Beethoven's Fifth or Brahms4th over and over. Until the midcult cult "understood" the work. Time-Life for years and years had the great composers series of records.....the same composers and the same works over and over as if there was only 40 or 50 great works. It was not until the late 50s or early 60s that the midcult could "get" Bruckner, let alone Mahler. The FM radio is the same, 3rd rate baroque or the same warhorses. It is like they do not want to offend the audience. Whether thru the airwaves or in the concert halls. When was the lasttime you heard an Ives symphony or a Piston symphony. Even Schoenberg's Guerrelieder. It is not so overtly dissonant that the audience cannot understand. Do they think we are that stupid or are they that stupid that they themselvesdo not understand. Maybe they cannot afford to be adventuresome in selecting music as to offend the patrons and listeners of the great dead composers.

What all of you are saying is correct, but my point, and maybe I did not state properly, is other than dedicated music companies that produce living composers music, how can
one hear and appreciate modern music, if the radio stations nor the symphonic orchestras will not play modern classical music? It is like going to a Museum of Music. It was not until Mendelsohnn (or was it Beethoven?) looked at the scores of Bach that composers seriously looked at past musical performances. And the cult of the conductor that developed from Mendelsohnn and after, created a situation in which the conductor only specialized in a certain dead composer. And perhaps on a societal-historical plane the decline of the subsidized artist to a free lance composer caused the decline of new music. Brahms catagorically stated he wrote for the masses, not for fine art, though I would beg to differ on the assessment of his work. Perhaps when the middle class, the conductors and the musical directors looked towards the past and not the hear and now, let alone the future, did classical music become a museum of the performing arts. And to the modern composers, they are subsidized again, either as professors at music schools or grants from the government. The exceptional few, are free lance. Just look at any textbook for Music 101. Three quarters of the book takes you to 1910. A few pages on modern classical music, the rest on jazz, blues, musicals, pop, and rock. Maybe that is what it should be, but then again maybe not. I guess it depends on your perspective of what you consider music as art. Of course what is a good definition of art?

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).