The history of 20th-century music can be seen as a series of more or less unsuccessful answers to—or evasions of—insoluble problems (due, in part, to the relative poverty of living musical traditions outside the concert hall and the felt inadequacy inside). From this point of view, it would be instructive for composers who are looking for new answers to build on the work of a figure like Matyas Seiber, who sought to master all the forms of music around him, to balance one with another and thus to open the way to new forms.