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Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8
D'oh! I don't know why I didn't think of George Gershwin with his Porgy and Bess and all those works. And I actually read a book about him when I was a child! I think that he had a brother who was a composer, too, but not of the caliber, or at least popularity of his brother. I cannot even recall his name at the moment.
I don't know exactly what the demarcations are for "classical music," but if you throw in composers known for motion picture scores, the list becomes quite long. Rodgers and Hammerstein is the first one to come to mind. I think that some of the ones that you listed might be, too?
Hopefully, we will get offers of freebies from some good American composers before long. Wouldn't it would be great to get a whole album, like Naxos offers a couple of times a month!
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The biggest reason Gershwin isn't included in most compilations like this is that most (if not all, I'm not sure) of his work still has copyright protection. Also, over the years there has been debate whether Gershwin's music categorizes as Classical or Jazz. That seems to have died away and I suspect that by the time his music is in the public domain it will be remembered as classical, if for no other reason that most people think of classical music as "really old music."