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Article: Art music recedes to the shadows.
- Article from:
- The World and I
- Article date:
- March 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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With the triumph of popular culture, the audiences in classical music gilded temples are dwindling, and the best music is heard in low-budget enclaves. Can the Grand Tradition long survive?
Last year, on the last day of summer, a couple of friends and I traveled from Boston to hear a special piano recital in the tiny hamlet of Ashburnham, Massachusetts, near the New Hampshire border. "This place," I thought, "is where the high art tradition ends."
Born almost a millennium ago in the monasteries of Avignon and Aquitaine, Western art music (or "classical music," as opposed to folk and popular idioms) radiated through the churches of Italy, Flanders, and ...