And I think it's really important. Because if you can imagine Mozart before the technology of the piano was invented what a loss to society there would be.

This is one reason performing artists in Europe like public money it liberates them from a diet of only Beethoven and Mozart.

The example they famously used was that of a Mozart string quartet, which requires the same number of musicians and instruments in modern times as it did in the nineteenth century.

The question is not one of popularity alone after all, Mozart was popular in his day, and Shakespeare s plays attracted the poor as well as the rich but of mass culture s refusal to challenge and provoke.

Cartoons of Mohammed are not published, and Mozart s opera Idomeneo is not performed in order to avoid offending religious sensitivities and when, in the end, the publication and the performance take place, they become a demonstration almost intended to offend.

This is one reason performing artists in Europe like public money it liberates them from a diet of only Beethoven and Mozart. Moreover, the audience may come to appreciate an adventuresome repertoire the more it becomes exposed to it.