Classical Argument

Bravo to KKGO-FM’s Saul Levine (Saturday Letters, Sept. 18). It is my favorite radio station, as was KFAC before it, for 30 years.

Reader Arthur Hoberman suggests that a world-class audience be developed to match the world-class L.A. Philharmonic. Good idea. Develop is the key word here, not force-fed. European audiences have had a more varied musical experience because of subsidization of the arts by governments.

For now, Copland, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Barber are as modern as I get.

ESTRELDA THOMAS

Fontana

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Hoberman writes that audiences “do not wish to hear dissonances.” It is not dissonance that displeases me. My objection to the music Esa-Pekka Salonen features and Mark Swed champions is that it is not good music.

You can’t fool anyone about good music--it is there to be heard--although I guess you can fool Salonen and Swed, who are taken in by ungifted charlatans and poseurs like John Cage and Philip Glass.

SAM WOODS

Los Angeles

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I extend my thanks to Levine for remaining faithful to the well-known “old classical music” and not programming the dissonant sounds of the atonal music of some of the current composers.

As for me, a day without John Cage is like a day I don’t have to go to the dentist.

ADELAIDE TATTO

Pacoima

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For the benefit of the L.A. Philharmonic’s programmers, here is a list of 20th century composers who wrote beautiful, highly listenable music that is decidedly not from the I-can-make-weirder-noises- come-out-of-the- orchestra-than-you school of composition. When was the last time the Philharmonic played any of them?

Malcolm Arnold, Granville Bantock, Arnold Bax, Arthur Bliss, Lili Boulanger, Dorothy Carwithen, Vagn Holmboe, Gustav Holst (besides “The Planets”), Jacques Ibert (besides “Escales”), Joseph Jongen (besides Symphonie Concertante), Uuno Klami, George Lloyd, Alberic Magnard, Jerome Moross, Ron Nelson, Julian Orbon, Paul Paray, Ernest Pingoud, Ture Rangstrom, Henri Sauguet, Charles Tournemire, Eduard Tubin and, above all, the inimitable Havergal Brian.

Well?

ALAN DEAN FOSTER

Prescott, Ariz.