All innovators, logically speaking, have been Futurists in relation to their time. Palestrina would have thought that Bach was crazy, and Bach would have thought Beethoven the same, and Beethoven would have thought Wagner equally so. Rossini liked to boast that he had finally understood the music of Wagner-by reading it backward; Verdi, after listening to the overture to Tannhäuser, wrote to a friend that Wagner was mad. So we stand at the window of a glorious mental hospital, even while we unhesitatingly declare that counterpoint and the fugue, which even today are still considered the most important branches of musical instruction...