Musical education of young generations...

[Opsa]

I just heard for the first time on our local classical station the other day that JS Bach was obscure in his day. Hard to believe.

There will always be re-discoveries and revivals. I remember getting bored with current rock in the early 80's and turning to the rock'n'roll oldies station. I became determined to get a background for my appreciation of the genre. There was so much material! And I know I still haven't heard half of it.

We get sirius stations on the TV here and our favorite music station is the Underground Garage channel. Really interesting, obscure music there.

[Swatopluk]

It has been said that in the 19th century the opera was the equivalent to the daily soap of today (and the production time was similar).
As a result for some known composers we don't even know the titles of all the operas they have written. E.g. the "inventor" of the Grand Opera, Spontini: We know that he wrote more than a dozen before "The Jewess" but that's all we know.
Today it is almost inconceivable that Bach had to compose 1 cantata per week apart from his full-time job or that 4 weeks was considered the maximum time for the writing/composing of an opera at the time mentioned above.
There has been lost more than just a bit of musical knowledge with the youth of today.

I have to admit that my own knowledge of 20th century popular music is also extremly limited (at least beyond name recognition) except for some relative obscurities.