Okay, you win.
It’s perfectly true that there’s a ton of 20th-century music in the repertoire – but most of it is early-20th century music. Another way to approach the question might be “how much postwar music is there in the repertoire?” The answer is not none, but it’s uncomfortably close. Someone mentioned Ligeti above, but is there any piece by Ligeti or somebody like that that could be regarded as being in the repertoire of major orchestras?
There’s a perception that classical music is a fossil art form, and I’m not far from sharing in it.
I was at the St. Louis Symphony a week ago and heard a Ligeti piece (Clocks and Clouds from 1973) and a piece by Henri Dutilleux from 1997 (The Shadows of Time). How often do they play these pieces? Dunno, but there is almost always something fairly modern on the program. Next week they’re playing John Adams’s Doctor Atomic Symphony (2005).
I believe nobody’s mentioned Ned Rorem (who’s still writing).
Benjamin Britten? Leonard Bernstein? Dmitri Shostakovich? I think you have to bring the death date of classical music to somewhere a lot later than 1945, and even then I’m not sure that it’s dead: it might be that we are still too close to it.
Rachmaninoff
Nothing else comes close.
Shostakovich I’ll buy, though a good part of his work was prewar. But how much Britten or Bernstein do you really hear?
Yeah, Rachmaninoff. His second piano concerto is from 1901, and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini is from 1934.
mmm Olivier Messiaen, Steve Reich, Anton Webern, are all smashing, fantastic & ace.
A couple who haven’t been given love in this thread*: Béla Bartók & Krzysztof Penderecki. The latter’s Passion of St Luke is awesome.
*assuming my reading comprehension is ticketyboo
Quite a bit. Maybe it’s because I’m a vocalist, but Britten seems to be one of the more ubiquitous names out there. I sing and hear it all the time.
An interesting hunch I had upon you mentioning this, which proved to be correct: the top three pieces in the Classic FM Hall of Fame, a good barometer of middle-of-the-road popular classics, are all from the 20th century. The Lark Ascending, the aforementioned Elgar, and Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto. (OK, so the last one was begun in 1900, but is that nitpick really worth the effort?)
I love a lot of the composers mentioned here, esp. Gorecki, Glass, Bernstein and Britten.
For a very recent piece, check out Marjan Mozetich’s Affairs of the Heart from 2000. Its neo-romanticism is a bit of throwback which is occasionally looked down upon by concert music snobs but it still remains a personal favourite.
One tragically overlooked composer not yet mentioned is Bernard Herrman. He wasn’t just a great film composer, he was one of the best composers of the 20th century. The scores to “Citizen Kane”, “Vertigo”, “Psycho” and “Taxi Driver” are all master-works which should be treated with the same respect given to the works of Bernstein, Copland, and other contemporaries. Actually, that could be said of a lot of other movie composers like Ennio Morricone, Jerry Goldsmith, and Howard Shore, as well.
Although Wikipedia says it is not known whether the 2 zappas are related, it is pretty well established they are not directly related.
The classical stuff I was referrring to can be found throughout his career, but of particular note is London Symphony Orchestry, Vol 1 and 2, The Yellow Shark, and Civilisation, Phase III
Warning, some of these are not for the faint of heart or the close-minded, but as has alrady been pointed out, YMMV 
Peter Grimes is debuting the end of February at the NY Metropolitan Opera, so it’s not like Britten is not still being done.
Slight hijack: It’s funny how everyone goes on about Bolero when it comes to Ravel, when it is the single most boring piece of music ever written. Folks, it’s *one *theme, repeated one squajillion times (I counted), with no development. The whole piece is written to be anti-developmental. Ravel himself called it “a piece for orchestra without music”, and was convinced no orchestra would ever want to play it. Apparently, it came about when he was sitting at the piano, and thought to himself “well, this theme is kind of catchy, let’s see if I can repeat it enough times to drive people absolutely bonkers”.
Seriously, though, I love Ravel - Gaspard de la nuit gives me a very large hard-on. But, heck, I just wanted to say that.
OK, carry on.
You, Sir, have obviously never…how shall I phrase this? Been in a romantic situation while Bolero was playing.
a lot more than Shostakovitch.
Word.
Make way! I can do Heimlich!
I’d say I hear as much Shostakovitch as Britten, and that’s even though I live in pure Britten territory. And I’ve never had a pupil ‘discover’ Britten and get excited about him, not in the way they do about Shostakovich (perhaps more so than any other composer).
Beat me to it. And yeah, nothing else comes close.