Classical Notes: February 22, 2007 Archive

More on new music and radio

Posted at 4:02 PM on February 22, 2007 by Don Lee

In a comment on my Tuesday post, John Clare asks, "How often do you 'put down the op-ed pages, turn up the radio and just listen' with any radio broadcast: music or news?"

In the answer to his--and my--rhetorical question is the point: We don't 'just listen' to the radio very often at all. We listen while we're doing something else. Some kinds of listening are compatible with other activity. Carter's Dialogues is not. Not to me, at least, and not in 2007. John makes a valid observation about the potential rewards of repeated listening, but I suspect even the year 2017 will be too soon to find Carter on my dinner music playlist.

(I am not, BTW, arguing for plain vanilla music programming. But if that's how this comes across, sound off and we'll continue the discussion on another day.)