Bob Draper:

>What's wrong with British music anyway? Nothing in my view.The only reason
>composers like Vaughan-Williams and Rubbra aren't better know is that they
>committed the crime of carrying on writing late romantic music when they
>weren't supposed to.

They also committed the crime of making their careers in England, rather
than in Germany or in France.  But there you have it.  Both wrote wonderful
works, but neither were especially influential.  Vaughan Williams was too
individual to be imitated.  Writing in his style is like writing a poem in
Dylan Thomas's style:  what you tend to get is a knock-off.  Schoenberg and
Messiaen, on the other hand, are influential because of procedures they
invented and a way of looking at music that intrigued other composers,
probably because the two wrote such marvelous music themselves.  But it
wasn't the music or the idiom people appropriated.

>Finally, I know people who cite Sibelius as their favourite composer.
>He's high in my top ten, so still very much in fashion here.

He was always quite popular in England.  In the US, much less so and not
as consistently, I'll bet - at least if you go by concert programming.
I would say that Mahler now occupies the position Sibelius once did.

Steve Schwartz