Nordschow: 'Trite' Mozart and the power of music's surface

Over at New Music Box, composer Randy Nordschow climbs down a bit from an earlier post -- "I probably went a little overboard last week when I called Mozart's music downright trite" -- and then offers an interesting assertion: "It seems to me the most important thing that composers should focus on is the outermost layer of musical surface—that visceral sense of what something actually sounds like before our minds have the chance to process it." He asks, "Does anyone know of any newborns who happen to be fans of Milton Babbitt? Just wondering."