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