I was amused by Ratzinger’s comment on classical music and I thought you would be too:

• “Modern so-called ‘classical music’ has maneuvered itself, with some exceptions, into an elitist ghetto, which only specialists may enter–and even they do so with what may sometimes be mixed feelings.”

-Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2000) 147.

If you have ever sat through an entire performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring or a Bartok String Quartet (as I have) or even the ridiculous “composition” 4’33 by John Cage, you know exactly what he’s talking about.