Bálint Varga is perhaps the world's most respected interviewer of living composers. For The Courage of Composers and the Tyranny of Taste: Reflections on New Music, Varga has confronted thirty-three composers with quotations carefully chosen to elicit their thoughts about an issue that is crucial for any serious creative artist: How can one find courage to deal with the sometimes tyrannical expectations of the outside world? The result is an imaginary roundtable at which we encounter fresh, revealing, previously unpublished statements from such world-renowned composers as John Adams, Friedrich Cerha, George Crumb, Sofia Gubaïdulina, Georg Friedrich Haas, GiyaKantcheli, György Kurtág, Helmut Lachenmann, Libby Larsen, Robert Morris, and Wolfgang Rihm. Also represented are composers who are becoming more prominent with the passing years, e.g., Chaya Czernowin, Pascal Dusapin, and Rebecca Saunders, as well as conductor-composer Michael Gielen, festival director Nicholas Kenyon, and music critics Paul Griffiths and Arnold Whittall. In The Courage of Composers and the Tyranny of Taste, composers and other insightful individuals comment on choices made, traps avoided, unforeseen consequences, proud accomplishments, occasional regrets: the whole range of experiences central to artistic creativity. Bálint Varga is the acclaimed author of György Kurtág: Three Interviews and Ligeti Homages, Three Questions for 65 Composers, and From Boulanger to Stockhausen: Interviews and a Memoir (all available from University of Rochester Press).

PromptsIntroductionHans Abrahamsen (b. 1952)John Adams (b. 1947)Vykintas Baltakas (b. 1972)George Benjamin (b. 1960)Friedrich Cerha (b. 1926)Unsuk Chin (b. 1961)George Crumb (b. 1929)Chaya Czernowin (b. 1957)Paul-Heinz Dittrich (b. 1930)Pascal Dusapin (b. 1955)Lorenzo Ferrero (b. 1951)Michael Gielen (b. 1927)Detlev Glanert (b. 1960)Sofia Gubaidulina (b. 1931)Georg Friedrich Haas (b. 1953)Giya Kancheli (b. 1935)György Kurtág (b. 1926)Helmut Lachenmann (b. 1935)Libby Larsen (b. 1950)Liza Lim (b. 1966)Luca Lombardi (b. 1945)Siegfried Matthus (b. 1934)Robert Morris (b. 1943)Olga Neuwirth (b. 1968)Enno Poppe (b. 1969)Karl Aage Rasmussen (b. 1947)Wolfgang Rihm (b. 1952)Rebecca Saunders (b. 1967)Allen Shawn (b. 1948)Johannes Maria Staud (b. 1974)Manfred Trojahn (b. 1949)Jörg Widmann (b. 1973)Christian Wolff (b. 1934)Paul Griffiths (b. 1947)Wolfgang Schreiber (b. 1939)Arnold Whittall (b. 1935)Heike Hoffmann (b. 1958)Sir Nicholas Kenyon (b. 1951)Epilogue: Rainer Nonnenmann (b. 1968) andBálint András Varga (b. 1941)Index