Brian Newhouse on the Nature of Genius

Is only the music of Great Geniuses worth listening to? Is music only worthy of being composed and presented to a public if it is guaranteed upon completion to be of Great Genius? If so, Paul Reale must either have a _very_ high opinion of the music he composes nowadays, that it is at _least_ as good as Handel's , or he must have the modesty in the face of Great Genius not to compose, since nothing he could write would come up to that exalted standard ... But seriously, we don't just listen to the music of the great geniuses like Bach and Handel; many of us are capable of finding delight, challege, and even hints of profundity in the mere great talents--say, Vivaldi or Zelenka or Rameau--insofar as they may have something distinctive and moving to offer that one doesn't necessarily get in Bach or Handel. (Not even the most encyclopedic master can offer everything.) Likewise, those of us who honestly love and admire the music of, say, Steve Reich (or Galina Ustolvskaia or Gyorgy Ligeti or Michael Gordon, to plug in names I might prefer to Part, Boulez or Lang) don't necessarily consider him as on a level with, say, Stravinsky (presuming Reale doesn't consider Stravinsky less than a genius); but we love and admire Reich's music for the distinctive expressive experiences that great talent offers us that can't necessarily be found to date in the unquestionable geniuses. (Which isn't to say that some unquestionable genius might not at some future time find Reich's music of enough interest to serve as a point of departure for something really extraordinary. Listen to the stuff Haydn grew up on.) But oops--"distinctive"...doesn't that imply "original"...and isn't the search for originality the root of all modernist evil? (Yeah, I know that such discussions tend to collapse distinctions between expressive and technical originality; but that's academia for you.)
Brian Newhouse