作者为英国作曲家和作家，上面简介里是他的一段书中前言，没录全，意思不完整，补充如下：

“本书写法带有高度选择性，我只强调那些标志着先锋派音乐发展道路的显著特征，这意味着我们要研究费尔德曼的《投影I》这样相对来说无足轻重的作品，而像潘德列茨基的《路加受难曲》那样重要的大型作品却几乎难以提到。再补充一点，本书是由个人的音乐体验和音乐观点构成的。”

这是一个作曲家按照自己的眼光，偏技术类型的眼光，撰写的一本以技术运用为纲的二十世纪下半叶“音乐发展纲要”。下为这位作曲家和作家的简历，来自“古典猫网”www.classiccat.net：

Reginald Smith Brindle (1917–2003) was a British composer and writer.

Although he wrote for many instruments, Smith Brindle was perhaps best known for his solo guitar music, especially El Polifemo de Oro (1956), written for Julian Bream, as well as five sonatas (1948, 1976, 1978, 1978, 1979), Variants on two themes of J. S. Bach (1970), Memento in two movements (1973), Do not go gentle... (1974), November Memories (1974), Four Poems of Garcia Lorca (1975), Preludes and Fantasies (1980) and The Prince of Venosa (1994).

Smith Brindle was an expert on the music of 20th-century Italian composers such as Luigi Dallapiccola, Ildebrando Pizzetti and Bruno Bartolozzi (he studied with all three). He played many instruments, but was particularly fond of the guitar, organ and saxophone.

For this second edition of his guide to the more adventurous evolutions of music since 1945, Reginald Smith Brindle has added a new chapter reviewing developments in the decade since the book first appeared. He discusses the decline of experimentalism and the reaction against increasing cerebralism and complexity as variously illustrated by the more recent works of Stockhausen, the 'minimalist' works of Reich and Glass, and the partial return to romanticism. He also reviews the technological revolution which has taken place in computer music, and concludes that the future of music will for the time being be most closely associated with technological change and development, rather than with radical change in compositional techniques.