ABSTRACT
John Cage once said that if you ever get a good idea, you had better act on it quickly, because you may not be the only one who has it. When a good idea emerges, it is in the air, ready to be taken and acted on by anyone who can read the signs. That was pretty much the way it felt in the spring of 1997, as Nora Farrell and I hurried to finish the music and make the art that would become Cathedral, a work, not for live concerts, but for the virtual stage of the World Wide Web—a never-ending display of music and art that anyone, anywhere, anytime, could hear. Because it was destined for the Web, there was a lot to do: Web pages to design; animations to create; and music files to shrink sufficiently small to actually stream. As the launch of the site approached, we were working day and night. Of course, I had some concerns about entering the new world of Web composition, not the least of which was worrying that, in moving my work to the Web, I might no longer be thought of as a composer of music for acoustic instruments. But that fear—unfounded as it turned out—was overshadowed by the lure of new artistic territory to explore, and the certainty—yes, certainty—that our path was right.
