It's rather like attending a university seminar where you are talking to a few gifted specialists who deliver a paper to an audience of their peers. That's one way of making music.
I remember once, when I started writing for the alto saxophone, a saxophonist told me to think of it as being like a cross between an oboe and a viola, but louder.
I've heard though that there is a younger generation of tonal French composers who are reacting with vigour.
Writing tonal music now, you are not writing into the 19th Century.
I have friends who have a CD mastering plant in Hollywood and they are very sceptical about European record labels' understanding of digital technology.
Like an apparently strict musical form it breaks the five minute whole into its structural parts - a descriptive preamble, the action of taking the cards, the development of the cards' manipulation and the revelation of what has been achieved.
