Why does it change? What dictates fads and fashion?
Taste, taste, taste. Who knows what dictates it. I mean people, they get sick of one thing after a while and want a change, I suppose. TL: Through the late 18th century and much of the 19th century, when people went to the concert hall or the opera, they wanted to hear something new, didn’t they? That was the difference from our time, when what we want and expect now is the standard repertoire over and over. But there was a period in musical life where if you heard a Beethoven symphony twice, it was an extraordinary thing. I expect that Beethoven, actually his sound must have sounded fairly modern to the public of his day. But I wonder when people heard Mozart and Haydn for the first time, or even Rossini, did it sound so modern to them? I mean, when you hear modern works today, they’re not beautiful on the ear, for the most part. There are exceptions of course. But a lot of them, it’s really a pain to sit through them. TL: Yes, the great pianist, Stephen Kovacevitch once described it
