Most underrated composer of 20th Century?

"Problem I have with Ellington is you never know what was written by Strayhorn.
Sorta like Beethoven publishing Schubert work as his own."

YEs, but few in the musical "genius" category achieve all their accomplishments in a vacuum. Nor should they be expected to. The best know who to work with in order to bring out the best. Some play bigger roles and may get more recognition than others. Ellington was clearly the boss and visionary, though Strayhorn's contributions were apparently many.

A purist perspective can be limiting. Stick a footnote to Ellington's claim then for Strayhorn.

Straight up, Ellington claimed works he did not write.

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.

If Philip Glass becomes underrated, I think the world is in some deep doo doo.

Learsfool, you are no fool. I could not agree with you more and you put it perfectly.