One very important aspect of our contemporary musical culture - some might say the supremely important aspect - is its extension in the historical and geographical senses to a degree unknown in the past.

Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.

Apart from these broader cultural influences which contribute to the shaping of our contemporary musical psyche, we also have to take into account the rather bewildering legacy of the earlier twentieth-century composers in the matter of compositional technique and procedure.

That's history. I say history because it happened in the past.

All the things that are in the past are in the past.

There's no sustenance in the past.