Classical Music as Relics for easy listening

Sounds like "Easy Classical" is just the format of that particular radio station (WGMS right). I don't agree with your assessment of WGMS, however I do agree they play a lot of chamber music and baroque music.

A commercial station needs to worry a lot more about listener levels than a public station in order to sell advertising. That is probably why most commericial Jazz stations play Cool Jazz, and the hard core Jazz is also on public stations.

Personally being a big fan of chamber music I won't complain. Since Schubert wrote a ton of chamber music in his short life, I'd think you would like the station.

For modern, I don't think Philip Glass would work on the radio. People would think the CD is skipping and call the station. You'd also need one of those street gang subwoofer systems in your trunk to play Christopher Rouse!! (LOL)!

WBJC up in Baltimore (91.5) does a better job of playing a well rounded list of classical. It is an independent non-commerical public station (ie, not PBS).

WETA (90.9) the PBS station plays mostly classical around the full slate of non-music NPR programming.

WGMS only plays parts (one movement) of major works, so they can have a lot of commercial breaks. Again a symptom of being a for-profit commercial station.

You will hear a whole work on WBJC in Baltimore. They also broadcast whole live concerts and operas. WETA is kind of in-between. Listen to the Performance Today program some evening on WETA.

BTW Schubertmaniac...There is a Tower Records in DC (actually on the border with Alexandria, VA). It is right off the Duke Street exit of I-395.

There are also DC beltway area stores in Rockville, Fairfax, and Vienna/Tysons

There is also a Tower Records in Annapolis on the south side of Rte 2 (south of the mall) in the shopping center that has the movie theater.

The few I have been in had the typical Tower large separate classical rooms.

To me the finest living "symphonic" composer is John Williams. John gets no respect from the classical crowd because he composes for motion pictures. This overlooks that the opera was once the main "theater"; and those operas were composed because the money was good. Look how many classical concerts begin with an overture, which is after all just an old show tune. 100 years from now they'll play the bicycle flying sequence from ET, the Love Theme from Superman, and the Empire March from Star Wars. Like all the others, John will have to be dead for 50 years before they notice how good he is/was.

While I basically agree with your list Flex, most of the modern composers you list compose music that is pretty small scale and simplistic in comparison with the masters.

There has been literally hundreds upon hundreds of "classical" composers over the last few centuries. Most have been long forgotten for the same reason.

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.