Deryk Barker sets me straight:

>>Peter Varley replies to me replying to him:
>>
>>>1) There are truly worthwhile composers whose music wasn't heard because
>>>it didn't conform to the avant-garde party line.  Some have been discovered
>>>in the 1990s, and it's likely that there are others who haven't been
>>>discovered yet.
>>
>>This sounds suspiciously like an article of faith, rather than a deduction
>>from solid evidence.
>
>While "wasn't heard" may be exaggerating, there is no doubt that in
>Britain during the era of the late William Glock certain composers were
>more or less ignored by the BBC in favour of others who, as we might now
>say, didn't really "have legs".

And of course the BBC was the main proselytizer for classical music in
general in Britain.  I know exactly the composers left out and the ones
favored.  The U.S., however, lacked this central force.  Some would argue
that the academy was its equivalent, but that assumes the academy was a
monolith and that it controlled a significant portion of our concert life.
If this had been the case, we would have heard more music by Aschaffenberg
and Darcy.

While I get angry about the ignoring of such composers as Simpson, Alwyn,
Arnold, Stevens, and Rubbra, it strikes me that much of the complaining
about Davies, Goehr, Gerhard, Searle, and so on is resentment not that
they were favored, but that they were played at all.

Steve Schwartz