MOZART GETS PACKAGED FOR '90S.

Byline: Calvin Woodward Associated Press 

Beethoven can be found these days amid the frilly undies at Victoria's Secret. Just go past the lace-top thigh-highs and hang a right.

On the counter, the German composer serves up ``Love Immortal,'' a tape of classical music to go with your love life. Schubert does ``Passion and Pleasure.''

In other stores, Mozart's music is packaged for the morning commute. There's also a soothing ``Baroque for Bathtime.''

In the music business, the oldest kids on the block are learning lessons from the upstarts. Classical music is being sold - just like jazz, pop and New Age - for every mood, impulse, need and occasion.

You can have ``Breakfast in Bed'' with Grieg, Bizet, Chopin - and Martha Stewart. Or ``Sunday Brunch'' with Bach, Handel, Vivaldi - and Martha Stewart.

The masters provide the music. Stewart, the ubiquitous guide to crafts, gardening, food and taste, contributes recipes.

``Classical music is a language - a language of feeling,'' said Peter Munves, a PolyGram senior vice president who is responsible for many lifestyle titles. ``We have linked one feeling in one album.''

The traditional classical titles mean little to many people, he said. ``This paints a picture for them.''

Some critics have suggested that assorted dead European composers are spinning in graves over this.

But Munves' 21-title ``Set Your Life to Music'' series, which includes the bath, bedtime and commuting music, has sold more than 1 million recordings, impressive for a genre in the doldrums.

Before taking charge of PolyGram's classical catalog, Munves worked on the CBS Masterworks ``Dinner Classics,'' classical gastronomy with music and recipes for specific meals.

Now there's IDG Books, which created the ``Dummies'' series of instructional publications. It has teamed with Angel Records to make the classics fun with interactive CDs such as ``Beethoven for Dummies.''

Walk through a record store and the classical aisles are still full of albums featuring fancy old art and guys in suits.

But a prominent section features classical compilations such as ``Ecstasy,'' ``Intimacy'' and Cosmopolitan magazine's ``Seduction.'' Covers depict scantily clad people who seem to be enjoying the music immensely.

``People will buy them as lifestyle products, as impulse purchases, not as classical music,'' Heidi Waleson, contributing classical editor for Billboard magazine, said of the themed recordings.

``They're buying the music because it's background music.''

Such marketing offers companies an economical way to package old material and sell it at reasonable prices, often under $10.

It's also a way to help baby boomers make the leap to classical music. London Records' ``Exile on Classical Street'' does this most explicitly by featuring rock stars' favorite classical selections.

Waleson said many of the compilations are wonderfully played but generally offer movements or parts of movements matching the particular mood, instead of the whole symphony.

Love it or hate it, it's a tribute to the greats.

Those who like the idea of ``Mozart for Morning Coffee'' or ``Lease Breakers'' - high-decibel classical designed to get revenge on your neighbors - say it shows that the classics still resonate in modern life.

Others say it shows the music is, despite this marketing form, indestructible.

Apart from Victoria's Secret, with its own collection, the lifestyle classics have moved beyond music stores to bookstores and other shops.

Munves says buyers tend to be women 19 to 49 with little or no classical music exposure. His ``Mozart for Mothers-to-be'' implies in liner notes that moms who listen may have tuneful babies.

It is unknown what happens if someone plays ``Mozart for the Morning Commute'' at bedtime or bathtub baroque during a meal.

Probably only a dummy would try such a thing.