any good compositions after 1950?

Yikes...so is there any music after 1950 that compares to the 3 B's?
I find that attitude incredibly elitist/narrow, and stupid, but typical
of the "classical" snots who, hopefully, are less and less part of the
music scene today. Using 1950 as a rough dividing line, I think much of
the music of Charlie Parker, Monk, Duke, Mingus, Gershwin, Miles,
Hendrix, Coltrane, Muddy, Wolf, Albert/BB King, Sabicas, Merle Travis,
Haggard, Willie Nelson, Chuck Berry, Willie Dixon, Paco de Lucia,
McLaughlin, and on and on, is certainly "equal" to the aforementioned
"clasical" artists (although I don't put the other two B's in the same
class as Bach, because I don't put any other western musicians into the
same class as him...but, that's just an opinion, which there is no way
to defend, nor would I try to). Not to mention the zillions of great
Turkish, Indian, African, South American, and who knows from where else,
musicians that we will never hear of...I still get physical chills from
"Back Door Man," 31 years after I first heard it...to me, that makes it
great, timeless, and equal to any symphonic work or string quartet ever
written...yucko to such bozos, and I am appalled that those sorts of
folks have been quite prevalent in teaching music to many aspiring
musicians over the years...Hstick

The question was...

> Yikes...so is there any music after 1950 that compares to the 3 B's?

Certainly there are great pieces being written all the time; fifty years isn't really enough time to have much perspective on what is "lasting" or "great" in any grand sense...

Anyway, I think probably that any "snoot" who would ask such a question is also implying something about the size of single works... I.e., implying that there are not any great, big, huge sweeping works of lasting importance and gravity and awe-inspiring subtlety within the Western Symphonic tradition being written after 1950... Harrumph.

Great works after 1950... Hmm... Let's see...
The secular cantatas of Frank Zappa spring immediately to mind...

Of the three great twentieth century "B's", Bartok, Busoni and Bliss, only the latter lived into the second half. However, another "B" wrote a piece that everyone I've talked to about it thinks of as a favorite. Although some academicians might object to it as program music, the soundtrack for the TV series, "Victory at Sea" by Richard Russell Bennett otherwise would seem to fit the bill. And I don't mean to simply that popularity implies greatness. It went to three LP albums, from mono to stereo, to premium quality LP reissue, and that's just in the original. A number of other excerpt compilations have been done by different groups, including one I have on an eight-track cartridge along with Robert Maxwell's "Ebb Tide" played by Frank Chacksfield's group. I suspect that a lot of people (not including myself) have bought the entire series on video just to have every last measure of the music. That's twenty-six episodes, or thirteen hours (less beginning and ending repeats and commercial breaks). There is also a film condensation.

After 1950? I like Boulez, Carter, Stockhausen, and Birtwistle.
-jan