Doug Henwood:
> The "intelligentsia" just doesn't listen to canonical classical music
> anymore - Bach, Brahms, or Berg. It - they? - seem to listen to jazz
> (not me, don't like the stuff much). Call me a philistine but I'd
> rather listen to Madonna than Charlie Parker, whose genius has always
> eluded me.
> ...
Judging by the occasional snatches I hear wafting from whatever the remaining classical stations are, I'd say the semi-quasi-intelligentsia listen to Mozart-and-Baroque- lite. Pharmacy music. (I once went in a drug store and some kind of Vivaldian thing was coming over the Muzak, and I asked the guy in the white coat what it was, and he said he didn't really know -- he didn't like that kind of music, preferred Broadway or something. So I asked him why he didn't play what he liked, and he said, "Because this is a pharmacy, and that's the kind of music people expect to hear in a pharmacy.")
I think a lot of jazz is in roughly the same bag and can be appreciated by non-jazz-fans that way. That is, it seems facile and doesn't mean a whole lot any more, but at the same time it's very pretty, intellectually impressive, and has a fine old warm tradition. There is some stuff with a bit more edge to it -- Thelonious Monk has a kind of Bachian flavor at times, for instance -- but it's very hard to find.
Just my cranky opinion, of course. You're welcome.