Culture January 1, 1

A rather touching aspect of music after 1945 concerns the close relationship between composers and the musicians who premiere their works. This intimacy is heightened in avant-garde and experimental music, which forces performers to adopt new reading skills and special techniques for playing their instruments (and sometimes to invent new instruments). In an indeterminate composition, the performer acts as a kind of co-composer, supplying compositional elements (including any and all aspects of melody, harmony, rhythm, tempo, and instrumentation) that the composer leaves free. The communication in these relationships often resembles that in a marriage, due to the nonverbal understanding between