The retrospective glance is a relatively easy gesture for us to make.
I pick up the New York Times or Time and it's talking about the latest rock group, which I'm sure is exciting to some people, but it neglects a huge area of music.
I am certain that most composers today would consider today's music to be rich, not to say confusing, in its enormous diversity of styles, technical procedures, and systems of esthetics.
Unquestionably, our contemporary world of music is far richer, in a sense, than earlier periods, due to the historical and geographical extensions of culture to which I have referred.
The advent of electronically synthesized sound after World War II has unquestionably had enormous influence on music in general.
Writing seems to be more difficult as you move through the years.
Most of my influences are turn-of-the-century.
Nonetheless, I sense that it will be the task of the future to somehow synthesize the sheer diversity of our present resources into a more organic and well-ordered procedure.
The future will be the child of the past and the present, even if a rebellious child.
The development of new instrumental and vocal idioms has been one of the remarkable phenomena of recent music.