It is entirely possible, for instance, without prior knowledge to hear such differences in the works of Boulez, Stockhausen, and Nono of the 1950s and 1960s, all using more or less the same technical points of departure. Allowing for a certain degree of oversimplification to make my point, it is possible to hear immediately Nono’s italianate lyricism, which somehow breaks through the tortured rigors of his serial compositional technique; Stockhausen’s less lyrical, more structure-oriented approach (without, of course, being inexpressive), and his rigorous, consequent, typically German turn of mind, making him emphasize theory almost as much as practice; and then Boulez, in whose music the typically Gallic characteristics of sensitivity to color and dynamic shadings—and to poetry—are easily discernible. These elements are not consciously striven for but are there by virtue of the fact that a creative artist, if he is genuinely and individually creative, cannot distance his music from himself. He cannot “absolutize” it, so to speak—even when the means employed may be considered by some completely abstracted and mechanized. The composer’s humanness and individuality will break through in even the most abstract or absolute or technical/intellectual musical forms.

But music can tell us that much about itself and about its composers only at the price of not being able to tell us more. And if that sounds like a riddle, it is. Its twin capacities to mean all and yet nothing represent two sides of the same coin. In this respect music is like mathematics: it makes us aware of concepts and ideas which do not exist in physical concreteness, tangible reality. . . .

Gunther Schuller