Stephen Hicken says, with regard to my preference for an empirical approach
based on tabulations of CD sales or citations in textbooks and articles.

>That would indeed make a different list.  It would tell you much about the
>audience for art music, but not much about the music itself.

This heads into philosophical grounds that have been debated before with
neither side giving ground.  Nevertheless, I would assert that "the music
itself" is meaningless unless someone hears it (or even examines the
score), however great.  It's like the tree falling in the woods.

The hearers are audiences, musicians, CD buyers and writers.  Their
reactions are all we have to go on vis a vis the merits of a work of art.
These reactions can be surveyed with varying degrees of difficulty, but
such surveys, I feel, would be far more significant than any one person's
list of favorites.

Now, as to which hearers are best able to judge the prospective immortality
of a particular work (assuming immortality is a signal aspect of
greatness), we could get into a fine debate, perhaps involving Charles
Rosen's concepts of elitism.

Jeff Dunn
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Alameda, CA