Daryl:

>Considering the state of contemporary "classical" music, I was wondering
>what the opinions of people on this forum would be on Electronic music.

Like anything else, it depends on the music.  There's a wide range of
electronic music.  For example, I just heard a very old-fashioned cello
concerto by Meyer Kupferman which used electronic tape.  But for the
tape, it could have been written before the Forties, as  could (perhaps)
Hovhaness's And God Created Great Whales.  I like Stockhausen's Gesang der
Junglinge and other  electronic work and  Varese's Poeme electronique.
Where do you put Walter/Wendy Carlos's Bach transcriptions?  Carlos has
done some interesting work on his own, working with all-synth and with
synth-acoustic instrument combos.  Barry Vercoe has done some marvelous
tape pieces.  I'm not wild about Subotnik's stuff.  The musique concrete
composers never appealed to me.

Steve Schwartz