While I share your passion for Beethoven, I have to take some exception to your characterization of the divide between current or popular music and “classical” music. For, after all, every piece of music was once “popular” and part of the mainstream. Beethoven was no more immune to the vagaries of current culture than InSync or Nirvana. That’s why his Symphony No. 5 has the recurring “deet-deet-deet-dah” theme … that was LVB sticking it to his critics who said that his melodies were brilliant but far too complex and boring for the “average” person. It’s a historical accident that people came to classify this sort of symphonic music as classical and somehow separate it from other music.

The separation is, IMHO, artificial at best. Our appreciation of music shares context with our times and lives. So, when Nick Drake tried to share his short-lived gift, almost nobody cared. Almost 25 years after his death, a Volkswagen commercial playing Pink Moon posthumously gave him a fame that he never enjoyed in life. One day, we may see pieces like Pink Moon classified differently from others of its time because it was somehow different. But, that doesn’t change its true place in history.

So, yes, the subtle wonder and majesty that I feel listening to the Moonlight Sonata almost overwhelms me. But, I can feel many of the same emotions listening to Lee Ann Womack’s I Hope You Dance. My thought is not to criticize. Please keep your love for the historical symphonic and operatic music alive; just realize that if LVB were here today, he’d be composing and competing with Counting Crows and Coldplay. The true beauty and splendor of music only occurs between your ears and can only occur if we allow it to do so. Be well and keep plugging.

Sandy