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The Shy Master
- Abstract
NOT ALL great composers are also greatly popular. Some, like Berlioz and Wagner, are so id- iosyncratic that their music will probably always exercise a polariz- ing effect on audiences. Others, like Elgar or Sibelius, are perfectly ac- cessible to their own countrymen but less immediately appealing to listeners whose tastes have been formed in different cultural cli- mates.
Even more puzzling are those composers who are all but wor- shipped by connoisseurs yet fail to please the public at large. Some- times their obscurity proves tempo- rary-Gustav Mahler and Erik Satie are perhaps the best-known exam- ples of “composer’s composers” who over time have become truly popu- lar-but more often they stay in the shadows, unknown to the many while loved by the few.
About the Author
Terry Teachout, COMMENTARY’s regular music critic and the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal, served as an editorial writer for the New York Daily News from 1987 to 1993. His "Rhythm Man: A Life of Louis Armstrong" is forthcoming next year from Harcourt.
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