Walter Meyer:

>Were any of the classical composers who are considered "great" today, in
>the sense of being listened to with some frequency, totally disdained and
>rejected in their lifetime? I can't think of any.

"Totally" disdained? No. But I can't think of any composer totally
disdained, just as I can't think of a composer loved by one and all.

>...  And while the congregation of the Thomaskirche may have exploited
>J.S. Bach, there's no question that the man's reputation extended beyond
>he confines of Leipzig, extending even to the royal court.

Yes, but not as a composer, but as a virtuoso.

>Handel, Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart, were spared obscurity in their
>lifetimes.

Funny you should mention Beethoven.  Beethoven, according to his testimony,
was honored, but seldom played.  Throughout much of the 19th century, he
was honored, but with the left hand.  Fanny Mendelssohn - not a bad
composer herself - remarked of some work, today considered a masterpiece,
that "Beethoven must have had no taste at all." Mozart, throughout most
of the 19th century, was considered a petite maitre.

>And even the more suppressed Soviet composers, like Denisov, Gubaidulina,
>Schnittke, were considered important enough to suppress and have now come
>into their own.

OK.  Now, what about Brian, Klebanov, Vainberg, Eben, Bacewicz, Nelhybel,
and so on?

>If there's no counterexample to my suspicion, is there a disturbing lesson
>to be drawn from this by composers who suspect they may not be getting
>sufficient recognition and hearing?

Not really.  You're assuming a canon that is "just" and unchanging.  Also,
you're sort of switching times and what you mean by "recognition." Brahms
was recognized as someone to pay attention to, but his symphonies were
treated with suspicion (as were Mahler's, another musician recognized
in his day, but at nowhere near our intensity of admiration) well into
the Twenties.  Furthermore, if composers don't make a noise, how do
they get taken up? Do they wait for some fairy godmother? With resources
increasingly scarce and expensive, with an audience remarkably ignorant of
music of the past nearly 100 years and hostile to what they don't know (and
I don't refer to "hard-core" classical fans like us), a composer's got to
have a certain amount of "push" to make it at all.  Most of the composers
I know - and for some reason I know several - work incredibly hard to get
their works out there.  This includes not only the submission of scores
to various competitions, commissioning bodies, musical organizations,
and performers, but also schmoozing and kvetching.  I have little but
admiration for this.  I see it as heroic, enterprising, and requiring more
work (this is in addition to actually composing plus a probable day job -
a tremendous amount of work in the first place) than most of us would take
on.  I certainly wouldn't.

Steve Schwartz