To the Editor:

After reading Terry Teachout’s “Samuel Barber’s Revenge” [April 1996], I wrote a letter to the editor expressing my appreciation but also posing the question of why Aaron Copland rather than Barber had become America’s de-facto composer-laureate. In reply, Mr. Teachout said he would “take up at some later date the subject of Aaron Copland’s preeminence among American composers.” With “Fanfare for Aaron Copland” [January], he has kept his promise. The article led me to rethink my (as it now seems to me) too easy dismissal of Copland, and I would like to thank Mr. Teachout, whose essays in COMMENTARY play a major role in my devotion to the magazine. More power to him.

Thomas F. Bertonneau
Mt. Pleasant, Michigan

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