Jeff Dunn: >When I was an undergraduate music major in 1969 at Grinnell College, I had >the privelege of driving two famous music writers back 50 miles to the Des >Moines airport. Enthralled by my love for the War Requiem, I just had to >ask their opinion of the merits. > >Both of them said the work was terribly overrated and would hardly last. > >Boy, were Irving Kolodin and Harold Schonberg wrong! After Britten died, a summary article on his career (I forget by whom; might have been Schonberg) appeared in the NY Times. Its thesis was that Britten was terribly overrated and would turn out to be our equivalent of Saint-Saens. I keep running into this notion, usually with writers of a certain age -- those who were musically formed by the Thirties and Forties. At any rate, so far Britten's reputation seems safe. Steve Schwartz