Another way to put it is that most rock/folk guitarists only play chords that they’ve learned, often a very limited range of them, whereas I think that autodidacts play chords that she’d found.

Bartok lived in Manhattan during the end of WWII. His health wasn’t good and he had no money, but I really wish he had made it up to Minton’s to hear the bebop. Of all the classical composers, I think that he’s the one who would have learned the most there, and the beboppers were already listening to him.

As for not knowing the names of the chords, which she claimed, maybe she just didn’t understand the specific terminology of the jazz musicians she was working with.

In that kooky Miles Davis autobiography Davis gives credit to Jimi Hendrix for untutored modal playing; Wikipedia gives us

[Hendrix] learned by practicing almost constantly, watching others play, through tips from more experienced players, and by listening to records. In the summer of 1959, his father bought Hendrix a white Supro Ozark, his first electric guitar, but there was no available amplifier. That same year his only failing grade in school was an F in music class.

You have a pleasant, humble way of expressing yourself.

In the interview I read Mitchell more or less claimed to be an autodidact. As for not knowing the names of the chords, which she claimed, maybe she just didn’t understand the specific terminology of the jazz musicians she was working with. Or maybe she really was atheoretical.

As for Mitchell herself, her esthetique, style, and persona don’t appeal to me much and I only like a few songs here and there, but I do recognize that she’s musically more interesting and more inventive than any other American or British “folk” musician I’ve ever heard (except maybe for Richard Thompson, if you want to call him folk.)

As for autodidacts, I’m strongly pro-autodidact. It really is true that Musorgsky and Satie were technically deficient, and it also really is true that they were the two first European classical musicians to escape from the Wagnerian / German morass which was their express intention.
There were dozens of composers among Musorgsky’s Russian contemporaries, most of them better trained than he was. Only Tchaikovsky is listened to today more than Musorgsky is, and Musorgsky has been the more influential of the two.

I think some of Regondi’s guitar compositions—his Introduction and Caprice, op. 23—and some of Mertz [the Bardenklange are very nice miniatures and his arrangements of Schubert and some 19th c. opera arias are very good] stand up well in comparison to similar piano repertoire of the time. It’s salon music, but it’s good salon music. Some of Napoleon Coste’s from the same period is also good.

Does it bear comparison with Beethoven? Well, clearly not.

The problem with the mid-19th century romantic repertoire for the guitar is that the stuff that finds its way into publication in anthologies and albums of sheet music is not their best stuff. The concert pieces are just too difficult for guitar players who aren’t of a really high standard. So it’s not especially well known and the pieces that are best known by those composers are really just etudes [like Coste’s and some of Legnani’s] or miniatures [like some by Mertz].

Where is this huge repertoire of renaissance stuff by composers who are of the ‘first-rank’?

What about de Falla’s “Homenaje pour le Tombeau de Debussy”?