Classical music - revolutionary, elitist, popular

Could it happen anywhere else? The four leading French presidential candidates answer questions on classical music. Here is a translation of leading rightwing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy's comment - The music we call 'classical' is the most popular since it has transcended time, fashion, and society to become contemporary. The music of Mozart and Beethoven was perhaps revolutionary, even elitist at the time, but how we can claim it's not popular?

For online translation tool click here. And that's the second appearance here by Sarkozy (photo above) in as many days, which shows untypical impartiality on my part.
With thanks to Clive Davis' blog for the heads-up. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk