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Thu, 11 Nov 1999 16:05:23 -0600 |
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Walter Meyer:
>... But weren't most of the works from earlier years that are popular
>today already popular when they were written? Taking just this century,
>the works Stravinsky, Bartok, Shostakovich, Prokoffiev, Debussy, Ravel,
>and other "modern" composers that have been mentioned, were known and
>appreciated pretty much as soon as they were written, even if they also
>had contemporary detractors. They didn't have to "grow" on the musical
>public's taste.
Again, this all depends on whom you consider the public. I could name
works by all of these folks that even people who listen to classical
music put down, and the audience has had a while to digest such works.
The idea that genius is recognized in its time is a comforting half-truth.
Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Most of the time, most modern music
doesn't even show up on the radar of a good number of classical music
listeners. It isn't all that hard to come up with a list of 20th-century
composers that few of us - including me - have heard of.
Steve Schwartz
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