Feldman once delivered a merciless sketch of the prospects of the American composer. He starts out as a romantic, Feldman said, a budding genius overflowing with original ideas, or at least with ideas about originality. Then he goes off to university and discovers that romanticism is defunct. He studies for six years at Princeton or Yale, learning about twelve-tone writing, total serialism, indeterminacy, and the rest. He goes to Darmstadt and samples the latest wares of the European avant-garde. “He writes a piece occasionally,” Feldman wrote. “It is played occasionally. There is always the
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