Steve Schwartz writes:

>Norman Schwartz (no relation) writes:
>
>>I feel a composer is "Great" if he/she gets their message across
>>(appeals) to the largest numbers and variety of listeners.  By variety I
>>mean to include the so-called "man in the street" as well as professional
>>performing musicians, musicologists, composers and those holding graduate
>>degrees in music.
>
>By those standards, no classical music composer is great.  The man in the
>street would rather suck exhaust fumes from the tailpipe of a bus (only
>slightly overstating here) than listen to classical music.

I don't think Norman was being so concrete as you seem to think he was.
I have been finding, more and more often, that there is little room for
hyperbole on this list.  A small suggestion which hints at ideas is often
taken far too literally to the extreme.  I agree with Norman that a "great"
composer might have a more wide-ranging appeal than a lesser composer.  Of
course, I am really against calling any composer "lesser" even though I do
have my own ranked list of preferences.  I might say that I consider Bach,
for instance, a "greater" composer than Messiaen because I think Bach is
more universally accepted a a master and a favorite than the latter.
However, there may be many more Messiaen fans than I realize.  I don't
believe Norman was saying a composer MUST appeal to the layman as well as
the learned enthusiast in order to qualify as "great".  I believe he was
just expressing his opinion on a possible criteria for determining the
"greatness" of composers.  We need a little room for exaggeration in here
guys; helps to get the point across sometimes!

Wes Crone