[chickamade]

That's not his point. His point is that he has connected to the music by listening to what he likes, rather than what he was told to respect. I'd hardly call that result "unexpected", though.

As for your point, it is debatable. I think the percentage of people enjoying classical music is greater today than 100 years ago.

If you actually meant that the quality of music we write today is lower, that is very hard to for us to judge until maybe 100 years later. Maybe you've heard of John Cage, Luciano Berio, or perhaps György Ligeti -- whose music was used as the soundtrack of 2001: A Space Odyssey. There are a lot of people out there writing contemporary "classical" music that are respected in the music community, but virtually unknown elsewhere (and they are respected because we are touched by their music, just like the author has written, and not because they are writing avant-garde, esoteric music).

I would admit that the percentage of quality music in the total corpus being performed and listened today is unfortunately lower than it might have been 100 years ago.