Classical music: Why aren’t America’s modernist composers as well as known as its modernist artists?

By Jacob Stockinger Recently, the culture critic Terry Teachout posed an interesting question in a column he wrote for The Wall Street Journal . Why, he asked, aren’t America ’s 20th-century modernist composers as well known as its modern artists such as Jackson Pollack and Mark Rothko ? Sure, you know of Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber, and you hear their music performed and played often. But what about Roy Harris, Peter Mennin , Elliott Carter, Walter Piston and William Schuman (below)? Or eve [...]