I just puked

Shubertmaniac, there is another dynamic at work here which you're not giving credit to. In the 20th century, for the first time ever, music become recordable. This probably CREATED 'classical music'. That is, in previous times, people concerned themselves almost entirely with the music of their own day, and there was a demand for new composition. Remember that Bach was already considered archaic by the time his sons were writing, and although later composers acknowledged the intellectual contributions of their forebears, the music actually heard was mainly that of the present, not the past.

Since recording began, we have certainly been more backwards-looking than forwards-looking. One reason, for the slowdown of interest in classical music is that it has, I think, (gulp) become a little boring. How many times can you worry about rerecording and reinterpreting the same work instead of getting on with something new.

To an extent, this is the collective fault of recordability, which inhibits new artists and new music from exposure, which as you say, has a money-basis. Look at the RIAA, which is backed into a corner at present trying to uphold what has developed for the past 60 years.

What is now going on is a backlash against the bind we've been in, and music seems about to break out again in different forms. The internet, downloadability of the works of small groups without recording contracts, the reemergence of live performance over recording - these may all change the nature of music again, and with it, allow a new cycle of high art music.

Music is never stagnant and high culture doesn't disappear - it just keeps changing forms.

Shubertmaniac, I think you misread or misunderstood my earlier post. I cherish and respect an individual's right to make their own choices, but I also understand that even the smallest individual choice has the potential for vast societal wide impact.

Flex: Beethoven was one of the first to look back on the past. He read the scores of JS Bach. I will accord you the fact that the phonograph is one of the compelling reasons for the downfall of classical music. However,the mass media led it down the golden path of monopoly capitalism. It turned the high art of music from a user value into a consumptive exhange value. Only modern classical art music is the only viable alternative to the stagnant repetitive classical music environment which pervades now. How many
Mahler cycles do we need? How many Beethoven cycles can you endure? The culture industry, and its sidekicks, mass media and advertising make sure there are enough. However I must admit, classical music sales are < 3% of music sales. And even of that 3%, 97% retreaded warhorses. But as Isaid above there is an alternative to the tired warhorses, there is modern music. I am talking about Schnittke, Ligeti, Berio, Penderecki,Rihm, Xenakis. Their music is not boring, it is extremely engaging, it is freely atonal, though as Schnittke once said about one of his works which did have a tonal center: I guess I can write in "the old style" if it suits my purpose.

Perhaps the internet will emerge as the forum and stage for new forms of music, however monopoly capitalism may have the last word. Any way capitalism can make a buck it will do it, culture or no culture, its the nature of the beast, like a weed it grows wherever it can.

Getting back to the original post, what about Dylan's "Love Sick" in a Victoria's Secret commercial?!

I love the Victoria's Secret commerical with Dylan, it is a classic case of Beauty and the Beast.