Most underrated composer of 20th Century?

I try to stay away from threads like this, as a professional musician, however I can't resist commenting that Philip Glass will NOT be considered underrated. He is very likely to be considered highly overrated, in fact he is so now by a great many. I like to call him the Andy Warhol of music - pop art at best. Minimalism in music is almost the same thing as Warhol's pop art, except Warhol had to work harder, because he actually drew each part of those paintings over and over again. All Glass has to do is come up with a few different chords and textures, and that's it. Pretty much anyone with basic compositional training could write that stuff. Most of his music would be intolerable, because of its length, without films that go with it. Some go as far as to call minimalism in general an intellectual cop-out. In the case of Glass in particular, I would agree. There are a couple of minimalists who have written some interesting stuff - Steve Reich is the best of them.

Hello everyone, I have had to be away from this board for a few days. Glad to see all the posts here! First, I agree with Brownsfan on Britten, though I don't think he is underrated by musicians, anyway.

John Adams - he is most certainly a minimalist composer, and I would agree with Frogman that he is more talented than most. He is certainly more "accessible" than most.

I definitely agree with all of Frogman's nominations, by the way.

And last, I cannot help but comment that Stravinsky has to be considered one of the ten greatest composers ever. He and Bartok both are in there based on sheer compositional craft alone. Let me make another visual art analogy - Stravinsky is the Picasso of music - he could do anything in any style. He is perhaps the only composer other than Mozart who was successful in all genres, too.

Speaking of jazz, Rok and Frogman, why have there suddenly been no new posts on that thread?

As for the English critic's comment, that to me doesn't even deserve a response, really. The very idea that Stravinsky "really doesn't have much to say" is of course sheer nonsense, both intellectually and musically. I would say it belongs in Nicholas Slonimsky's famous book of musical invective, except it's not really invective, just sheer ignorance. It certainly should have revoked his credentials to be a serious music critic, that's for sure.