Ann McCutchan is the author of six books, most recently The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Author of The Yearling, released in 2021 by W.W. Norton. As well, she is a busy lyricist and librettist, with eight commissioned works, most recently The Dreamer, an opera based on an original story with composer Mark Alan Taggart, premiered by the East Carolina University Opera Studio in 2021. Her personal essays have appeared in various journals and The Best American Spiritual Writing.

McCutchan's approachable, non-specialist book provides necessarily open-ended and ambiguous glimpses into the ineffable mysteries of musical composition.

• Alphabetical List of Composers Foreword by Leonard Slatkin (Music Director, National Symphony Orchestra) Introduction 1: Eric Stokes (b. 1930) 2: Steve Reich (b. 1936) 3: William Bolcom (b. 1938) 4: John Corigliano (b. 1938) 5: John Harbison (b. 1938) 6: Joan Tower (b. 1938) 7: John Adams (b. 1947) 8: Claude Baker (b. 1948) 9: Dan Welcher (b. 1948) 10: Daniel S. Godfrey (b. 1949) 11: Fred Lerdahl (b. 1949) 12: Shulamit Ran (b. 1949) 13: Christopher Rouse (b. 1949) 14: Steven Stucky (b. 1949) 15: Libby Larsen (b. 1950) 16: Lois V Vierk (b. 1951) 17: John Zorn (b. 1953) 18: Michael Daugherty (b. 1954) 19: James Mobberley (b. 1954) 20: Bruce Adolphe (b. 1955) 21: Bright Sheng (b. 1955) 22: Richard Danielpour (b. 1956) 23: David Lang (b. 1957) 24: Sebastian Currier (b. 1959) 25: Aaron Jay Kernis (b. 1960)