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Fill in the blank. Dead. Dying. Just fine. Who cares?
A new round of the age-old discussion about the current health, and future of classical music.

Matthew Guerrieri  has a well-done entry that relates classical music to non-functional demand curves. “Huh?” you say? It relates sociology to economics, and talks about things like the “bandwagon effect,” and the “snob effect.” He also points out that it is misleading to think of “classical music” as a single thing – that to better understand what’s going on you have to understand that classical music is really an umbrella term for many individual things.

Alex Wellsung writes about modes of listening, and touches on the importance of technology in creating a product (popular music) that is ideal for manufacturing and cultural consumption in a “bandwagon”-type of global market. I love his labeling of classical music as “slow food.” (the opposite of McDonalds…)

As always, Alex Ross picks up on the debate, and offers a few insightful additions.