The Museum of Lost Composers #1: Henry Cowell - Very Beginning

Play through The Tides of Manaunaun

So who's the Great American Composer?

Obviously, this question is half-meaningless. How do you quantitize quality? 'Better than' is a very nearly useless term in art, because the qualities of individual artists differ so much from one another that the differences make them very nearly incomparable.

All we can do, meaningfully, is talk about the individual qualities of great artists and what makes them great. Even if you want to talk about qualities different artists share in common, the way they go about those qualities is so different from one another that it's impossible to draw a meaningful comparison. If you want to talk about spirituality in American music, then the transcendental chaos of Charles Ives is obviously very different from the simple-spoken austerity of Aaron Copland, which is very different from the mantra-like mesmerism of Philip Glass, which is obviously very different from the oracular opacity of Bob Dylan. It sheds so very little light on them to talk about what's better and what's worse.

So let's do it anyway...