Everyone is aware that so-called serious music has made great strides in general public acceptance in recent years,
but the term itself still connotes something forbidding and hermetic 10 the mass audience. They attribute 10 the professional musician kind of initiation
in secrets that arc forever hidden from the outsider. Nothing could be more misleading. We all listen to music. professionals and nonprofessionals alike, in the
same sort of way, in a dumb sort of way, really. because simple or sophisticated music attracts all of us, in the first instance. on the primordial level of sheer
rhythmic and sonic appeal. Musicians arc flattered, no doubt, by the deferential attitude of the layman in regard to what
he imagines to be our secret understanding of music. But in all honesty we musicians know that in the main we listen
basically as others do. because music hits us with an immediacy that we recognize
in the reactions of the most simpleminded of music listeners.