Why isn’t John Williams treated like Igor Stravinsky?
In the grandest concert halls and opera houses of Europe and the United States, the work of 20th-century American composers—often immigrants who escaped Fascism in Europe, some of whom wrote music for films—is rarely afforded the same esteem as the work of European composers who composed experimental, non-tonal music.
John Mauceri, the esteemed American conductor, puts forward a passionate indictment of the suppression of an entire musical tradition, and offers his thoughts on a possible solution.