While editing this issue of MET, I started thinking about the many great classical composers who were born in December, the month when the Winter issue reaches subscribers. The most famous of them was Beethoven, but I noted that Sibelius was on the list. Many music lovers identify Sibelius with his seven symphonies and his beautiful, if grandiose, Finlandia, among other works. But today, if you mention Sibelius to tech-savvy musicians, they usually think of notation software, which is what got me thinking about him.

A century separates Beethoven (1770-1827) from Sibelius (1865-1957), but the essentials of composing music remained the same for centuries. You studied until you could read and write music as you could your native language. You knew a part was right because you could hear it in your head, but you never got to hear it actually played until it was complete and an orchestra played it for the first time. However, over the past 20 years, music software and commercial electronic musical instruments have significantly changed the picture.

It's impossible to say that these composers would have written more or different music given modern technology. Then again, Sibelius struggled to complete his fifth symphony and kept rewriting it; maybe he could have reached his goal more easily if he could have composed it in a notation program and played back early drafts with a synthesizer or sampler. (If Jean Sibelius were alive today, would he use Sibelius software, or Finale, or some other scoring program?)

Of course, I'm being facetious. Beethoven had a high-tech tool called the pianoforte that was big medicine in his day, but what really mattered was that he had incredible talent, imagination, dedication, and training. In fact, part of his greatness was that his imagination and talent led him to push the technology to its limits and beyond; even Beethoven's beloved Broadwood piano couldn't entirely respond to his powerful style and tremendous emotional range.

Like Beethoven, we have the advantages of new tools that allow us to create (and teach) music in a way that is ideal for today's young musicians. And as Beethoven did with his Broadwood piano, we should not be afraid to test the limits of the technology, because we can often do more with these tools than initially meets the eye and ear. In this issue, for example, author Scott Watson has identified a host of creative and productive ways to use notation software that may not have occurred to you (see “Eleven Innovative Uses for Notation Software” on p. 11).

We can't know whether Jean Sibelius would have used notation software, had it existed in his time. Perhaps if Beethoven had used software synths, he would have crashed his computer by pushing it beyond its limits, giving him still more reason for his famous stern visage!

Fortunately, you and your students have the opportunity to use these tools — and to push their limits. I encourage you to experiment with music technology. Yes, of course you can and should use the products conventionally, but don't be afraid to go beyond convention and apply your imagination. That's what the great ones did.