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To me, reaching out to the audience and writing something I am truly satisfied with as a composer are two irreconcilable things. Maybe things were different in former times when the general public was still slightly more musically educated. But nowadays it seems that, to quote Carter once again "most audiences are in same position I was in when I was a little boy."
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This may not be Carter's (or your) implication, but the above strikes me as demeaningly portraying dissenting audiences as childlike. Such an attitude is exactly what will continue to separate much of musical academia from the mainstream. If, as with the case of a child, audiences need educating (which they probably do), you can either sit them down with a text book and/or lecture them, or you can introduce them to aspects of avant-garde thinking via a distorted flavour of a pre-existing medium which they understand.
Of course, this principle needn't restrict itself to music. I know one person who took a liking to ambient music after watching Donnie Darko. And I reckon that the Qatsi trilogy might find some as a door into minimalism. With something subjective, personal and conditionable like music, stubborn dogmatic statements rarely yield results, regardless of their rational veracity.
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As composers of art music, we strive to communicate deep and profound things, yet this only seems possible through a musical vocabulary that is unfamiliar and unintelligible to most listeners (and certainly not through the vocabulary of pop music). However, I take comfort in the fact that the works which, in the end, turned out to be important landmarks in the history of western art music were very often works which were not understood by audiences in their time and which considered reaching out to the audience as a secondary matter.
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If a piece of music really is unintelligible to the listener, then the communicative attempt has surely failed. Forget about any deep and profound intent - if it is lost upon the listener, it is a wasted exercise, no?
The only recourse then becomes to pass the buck onto future generations who, it is relied upon, may decide that there is in fact a message contained within the music; something to relate to, something to grab hold of, something that renders it of interest, significance etc. As you rightly point out, this has sometimes been the case. However, the fact that it rests quite heavily on a simple assumption renders it quite precarious in my view - sort of a flirtation with wishful thinking.
And to whom are we referring with regards to eventual acceptance, anyway? Musicologists and academics, or audiences? If it is to be a historical reprisal of a little-known (or even unknown) gem, it's the musicologists who will do the digging. And we all know that musicologists and audiences often don't relate to one another very well. In a very real sense, especially taking into account the financial realities of orchestras, record labels etc. and music's status as a social meme, it seems to me a safer bet to at least partially chase after the audience when seeking out longevity, or verifiable acceptance.
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I suspect a lot of people underestimate the "average" audience's ability to appreciate music that is more demanding of them.
Probably this attitude is brought about through people like Carter et al who treat the audience as a "necessary annoyance".
I've seen rapturous receptions given to new works, and this from the "ordinary" concert audience.
There is a fine line between blowing your audience off and at least TRYING to communicate with them.
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I agree, and I think exploiting this "grey area" is a very viable strategy, which as far as I can tell you also seem to believe.