New Yorker music critic Alex Ross says much the same thing as David Bailey:
Mozart did not come from nowhere. He was the product of a society that was avid for music on every level, that believed in the possibility of an all-encompassing musical genius.
This is Romantic codswallop. The huge peasant class of Mozart's day had neither the time nor energy to be avid for music at any level, save at a wedding or the like. As for the upper and middle classes, to them a great composer was at about the same level as a great caterer.
It is precisely the tremendous growth of the middle class since Mozart's day that has allowed it to develop a music of its own--which is what popular music is. Classical music is now what it has always been at all times and in all cultures: an intellectually elite pursuit of a small minority of the population. It takes a peculiar type of historical blindness to imagine that Mozart's music was "all-encompassing" either in its variety or in its audience.
Andrew Stiller
Kallisti Music Press
http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/
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