ABSTRACT
The musical language that best expresses your musical persona is often intertwined with the concept and structure of a particular composition. No longer is there a lingua franca such as existed in the era of Western tonality. There appears to be a bewildering multiplicity of choices of musical language, ranging from the conservative to the exploratory. Nevertheless, viewed from the perspective of the twenty-first century, the styles that occupied composers in the twentieth century might fall into two broad camps: either tonal or non-tonal.
