This goes to the heart of the matter. Some posters have asked why it is that everything has to be sold to our kids as FUN. I agree that's a problem, but only if you define fun in a fairly narrow and superficial way (as our culture tends to do). I teach a few piano students, and I'm always thrilled when one of them figures out that FUN and WORK are not opposites in this arena.

Scales may seem a chore, but if I teach you how to play a Bb dominant scale, and then show you how to use that scale to improvise freely over a 12-bar Bb blues, and maybe even play along with a bassist and drummer while doing so...well, chances are you'll work hard to practice that scale. Or if I show you the first few pages of a Mozart sonata and point out all the scalar passages, then play them at breakneck concert tempo but with perfect tone and balance, that may motivate you. Work tied to a challenging but satisfying goal becomes fun.

Even if I manage to motivate a student this way, my next challenge is to convince them that slow, steady steps will take them to their goal faster than rushing. So maybe I'll revise my thesis a bit: Work plus patience plus goal equals fun. The "patience" part is easier for some kids than others, and generally easier for adults than children (but not always!).

But this approach is especially hard to convey in a culture that tends to define fun in passive or superficial or self-destructive ways: watching television, cheering for sports teams, gossipping about celebrities, binge drinking, downloading music, etc. Nothing inherently wrong with any of that, but it's so limited. What about DOING instead of just CONSUMING, what about ACCOMPLISHMENTS over ENTERTAINMENT?

Sandy Asirvatham

What I hate most about this sort of "experiment" is the assumption that the beauty of so-called classical music (and let's be accurate here: even among regular concertgoers we're really only talking about the most famous and crowd-pleasing works of a dozen or so male European composers between the 17th and 19th centuries) is somehow completely self-evident, or should be...even to busy commuters rightfully focused on how to please their bosses and survive the workaday crapfest and still get home in time to throw something in the microwave and possibly oversee their kids' homework.

I have never met a diehard art-music fan who didn't either hear a ton of it within their family growing up, study it via an instrument in their youth, or discover it during college when they had loads of leisure time to absorb and assimilate the tradition. Popular music is popular because, within any given cultural context, its charms are easily recognized and don't require much of the listener, beyond a mostly inborn ability to respond to rhythm, repetition and contrast, and patterns of tension & release. Those are the same basic elements that go into more difficult music, but usually in a highly worked and rarified form. Playing well and sincerely in the classical music tradition is acknowledged to be hard work for the musicians who play it and the critics who write about it--so shouldn't those folks be willing to acknowledge the hard work involved in appreciating and understanding it?

Well, if Marchese's counter-article is as inaccurate as some of the letters above describe, then I was too quick to apply what I said above to Weingarten and Bell...

...but generally speaking, I do think there are many people out there who decry the "bad taste of the masses" without acknowledging the utter contingency of their own preferences.

If this LW forms a band with "likeminded people," it will be a room full of narcissists, and the last thing needed in a band situation is 5 divas with no one to hold down the bass line and keep the tempo steady and make sure rehearsals get started on time.

Everything about this letter reeks of immaturity, from the exasperating references to near-genius IQ and "outside-the-box" thinking (hint: truly creative thinkers don't use such tired corporate-speak) to the dismissal of other human beings as "drones." Don't worry, LW, no one will laugh at you for being 45 because they'll never guess..you will fit right in with the self-involved 20-somethings who populate the club music scene.

To help yourself grow up, try contemplating what it means to have artistic "gifts." They are abilities given to you (by your genes or God or the universe or however you want to view it). To show your gratitude for having been lucky enough to receive them, you find ways to share them with others who dream the dream but don't have the talent. It's not about you: it's about them, those "drones" who you'll be desperately trying to connect with when you want them to buy your CD or show up to your gigs.

in large part because they have the education and freedom to imagine themselves in roles other than wife and mother.

Gentlemen, in your rush to come up with complex, evolutionary psych-style explanations, don't forget this obvious, simple, and incredibly powerful fact.