Why do museums/orchestras/theatres feel like they have to try so hard to explain their art, asks Rupert Christiansen. “In an era when television, radio and recorded music function as a constant hum in the hinterland of our daily activities, we have become increasingly unable to concentrate on only one of our senses. This restlessness takes several forms. Popular culture relies on masturbatory stimulation of a combination of eye and ear: action movies are accompanied by deafening soundtracks, the rock song has been transcended by the rock video – and the more weirdly extreme the imagery, the more headbangingly hard the beat, the better. Higher culture, on the other hand, is always anxiously explaining itself, with the help of another medium.”