It is a pleasure, in this issue inaugurating a series on “The Survival of Culture,” to be able to recommend a new venture committed to the survival of the culture of classical music. It is called Andante.com, and as the name suggests it is (in part) an internet venture. Having begun last spring, its stated purpose is “to document and preserve the world’s recorded classical music heritage, and to become the definitive online resource for information about classical music and opera.” Andante is the brainchild of Alain Coblence, a French lawyer and the head of the European Mozart Foundation. He is joined by Pierre Bergé, the former head of the Paris Opera, and Jean Francis Bretelle, a French venture capitalist. On the advisory board of Andante are several distinguished musicologists (Henry-Louis de La Grange, Jean-Jacques Nattiez), as well as eminent musical artists such as Pierre Boulez and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

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