Yesterday’s panel

Small audience, good discussion. I was very struck with the passion that began to come out. This subject — the future of classical music — gets people going. It doesn’t only stir up peoples’ love of music; it stirs up everything they care about in current culture.

So one woman got up and passionately said it was “naive” to think that a more informal presentation could attract newcomers to classical music .The music’s too complex for that, she said. Someone else declaimed for some time on the theme that popular culture makes everybody passive. Someone else, who loves popular culture, thinks that it’s badly degenerated since the old days.

Everyone who’s read me here knows I disagree with all these thoughts. But I honor the people who voiced them. They deeply, deeply care.