Standard Snippet/Quotes

"In the mass-media era, the general public primarily experiences classical music through detached snippets of larger pieces extracted to lend their symbolic power to a commercial agenda. Artists and advertisers dissect classical works into short melodies — quotable passages severed from their original context — assembling a menu of musical leitmotifs to bolster their message with a desired tone, mood, or association. Like artificial flavoring for the ear, these symphonic excerpts infuse scenes with the synthetic emotion of choice. Need a touch of European elegance? Mozart will make that minivan commercial suddenly suave. Concerned a slow sequence leaves your audience snoozing? Wake them up with the "William Tell Overture" for instant adrenaline. Does your pancake promo lack punch? Reroute Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" from Valhalla to the International House of Pancakes.
The artistic consequences of such practices are devastating. Conscripting Wagner's Valkyries as pancake saleswomen necessarily lowers their impact at the opera house. Some pieces are quoted so often that their secondary associations overtake and cheapen the original music. Carmina Burana exists as a permanent musical cliché. Orff's "O Fortuna" evokes only kitsch; under which circumstances can a listener now have an authentic encounter with that choral-chanting calamity?"

—Theodore Gioia, Bach at the Burger King (Los Angeles Review of Books)