Rather than choosing the supreme works from different schools, "organized according to the reassuring development of a genealogical tree", let me suggest adopting a different means of categorization put forth by Jean Clay, author of one of my favorite books on modern painting: Color: "It frees itself from its ancient descriptive function....to become henceforth merely itself." Distortion: "The expressive distortion of Classical canons reveal spacings, shapeless areas in which the pictorial substance begins to create a specific atmosphere...." The Pulverized Object: "The object is decomposed into a puzzle of fragments...linear perspective is abolished." Frontality: "...internal logic dictates form. Step by step surface organization gains over representational depth." The Real Object: "The real object is introduced into the composition... either inscribed into the coherence, or used to explode the work under its imported presence." Now, I fully realize that I'm borrowing vocabulary that has particular meaning when applied to the visual arts, but it's still fun to use these categorizations for music. With these categorizations, one can link seemingly unrelated composers in new and surprising ways. By using this approach, It is much easier to see the roots of *all* 20th Century music, no matter how forbidding, in the earlier centuries. My own comparisons to come. Have fun! John Smyth