Having already decided twice not to enter this discussion, I find I must
chime in to respond to Wes Crone's recent remarks.  He wrote:

>Any moron with a pen can also write music than ANYONE can perform.
>However, not ANYONE can write music, whether playable or not, that is
>just damn good music.. ...

Actually there is some small, but real, correlation between the
excellence of an artistic statement and the playability of the piece.
Writing idiomatically for an instrument is not the same thing as rehashing
the past.  The suitability of a piece to a particular player's technique,
inherent 'brand' of expressivity, and sheer physiological requirements (
hand-size, stretch, flexibility, etc.) may be important factors in that
piece being adopted into this artist's repertoire.

And it makes a difference to the composer to be writing for a particular
performer:  Is he poetic? Is she an iron-muscled dynamo with pistons for
fingers?

(When Arleen Auger and Dalton Baldwin commissioned me to write
"Nattens Monolog" for her Lincoln Center 'Great Performers' series
recital in spring '85, I consulted with Dalton specifically on aspects
of 'vehicle-worthiness' for the piano part alone.  Having lived with his
recording of the "Erlking", I was convinced there was *nothing* he couldn't
play!  Turns out I was pretty close to right.)

Wes Crone also wrote:

>The limits of our technical facility can never reach
>the heights set by the limits of our fantasies and imagination.

Ah, but for the composer much of the 'engineering' satisfaction in writing
music comes from working to make these two edges meet.

Judith L. Zaimont
(whose SONATA is the 1999 highlighted work on Piano & Keyboard magazine's
20th century timeline)
www.joblink.org/jzaimont