ABSTRACT
In those years, it seemed as though the era of the internationally dominant virtuoso, the marketed star, would fade. Certainly cultural homogeneity, the acceptance of unexamined values that maintains broad cultural consensus, could no longer be taken for granted. One possibility seemed a return to the more functional, individualized production of the artisan: custom-made products for diverse tastes, more adaptive combinations of the agreeable and the challenging, responsive to each individual. There has been indeed a fuller response in all phases of life to the fact of diversified products and services and, hence, diversified need. In the arts, a wider experience with mixed media is available, but there has not been a return to anything approximating the informed amateur of the past. Because of the virtuosity and pervasiveness of communications technology, the listener is content to remain passive. The connoisseur of structural niceties, however, will no doubt continue to be served by subtly structured and carefully tailored music or sculptural objects.
