By John Schaefer

Just because something is inevitable doesn't mean it's necessarily bad. Granted, it does seem that way sometimes: there's the proverbial death and taxes, of course. Cars will break down when they sense they are far enough from civilization. Children will interpret your reaching for the telephone as a signal to reinvent Primal Scream Therapy. But sometimes, you just know that something good is bound to happen.and you can still feel a flush of pleasure, and perhaps even surprise, when the inevitable finally occurs. Because it feels right.

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich has been named Composer of the Year by Musical America. To anyone who's been following Zwilich's remarkable career, such a distinction has seemed inevitable. In fact, the surprise is that it hadn't happened already (I, for one, just assumed she'd been so honored some years ago). Since winning the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1983, Zwilich's career has been in the ascendant. She is now one of America's most sought-after composers and holds one of classical music's most prestigious positions: the Composer's Chair at Carnegie Hall. Her music appears regularly on major orchestral programs, and if Zwilich's recordings aren't the last ones on your CD shelf, you're either a fan of Samuel Zyman or you need a few more CDs.

A few basic biographical facts: Zwilich was born in Florida in 1939, studied trumpet first and later violin, and became a violinist in the American Symphony Orchestra under Stokowski. Perhaps her first major work was the String Quartet of 1974, written while she was still studying with Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions at Julliard. It was a personal statement, though one that used the modernist language and gestures that held sway in the halls of academe.

Zwilich began to search for a more direct means of approaching the audience, following Mozart's dictum that music should have something both for the connoisseur and for the casual listener. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her Symphony No. 1 in 1983; by that time, her musical language had evolved. She clearly delighted in the craft of composition and tried to share that delight with a somewhat broader audience. A series of major commissions followed, including the Piano Trio (1987) for the Kalichstein/Laredo/Robinson Trio, the Triple Concerto for the same trio and a consortium of orchestras ten years later, two commissions each from the Chicago Symphony and the New York Philharmonic (who recorded Symbolon for New World Records), and the new string quartet written for the Emerson Quartet's current season. In the 1995-96 season, Carnegie Hall inaugurated its Composer's Chair position and announced Ellen Taaffe Zwilich as the initial occupant, for a term of three seasons. Three seasons later, both sides agreed to extend the collaboration for another year.

Oh, there is one other biographical fact that some have noted-Zwilich is a woman. This has led to quite a lot of "first woman" nonsense, especially when she became the "first woman" to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music. As more women have taken their place in the music world, and as Zwilich's own reputation has grown, this has abated somewhat. And yet, even at this late date in the 20th century, there are still a benighted few who refer to her as a Woman Composer. In fact, there are women who have made their gender a part of their musical persona. But Zwilich is not one of them. She is simply a composer who happens to be a woman. (My favorite Zwilich quote: "I like being a woman; I've never been anything else.")

A more salient biographical fact is that Zwilich was a player herself. It's hard to overstate just how important that is. She writes music that performers love to play and that fits her instruments, making it easier to convey her music more directly to the listener. A good example is the Violin Concerto premiered at Carnegie Hall in March of 1998. Violinist Pamela Frank, conductor Hugh Wolff, and the Orchestra of St. Luke's premiered the work to the kind of critical and popular acclaim that we associate with the Good Old Days of classical music, when new music by a Mozart or a Beethoven was an event, something that had people buzzing and critics reaching for superlatives.

Of course, the Composer of the Year is a purely musical award, not a popularity contest. (Good thing, too. Classical music history is full of sour geniuses whose social skills ranged from the merely tedious to the practically retarded. Think of Beethoven and Brahms. And let's not even get started on Wagner.) But Ellen Taaffe Zwilich has a winning personality and an energy and enthusiasm for the music world that has benefited numerous other composers. As Composer's Chair at Carnegie Hall, she has been eager to document the generation of composers who came before her and has used her stature to boost the careers of the generations that's come after. Her series of videotaped interviews with important American composers forms the basis of a unique, ongoing archive of 20th-century American music. And via a combination of skillful programming and genial hosting, she has given credibility and visibility to new music through the concert series known as Making Music. The first season in the series, in early 1997, saw Carnegie Hall programs devoted to the music of Ned Rorem, Steve Reich, Alvin Lucier, and Zwilich herself. The very idea of an evening at Carnegie Hall revolving around the charmingly gnomic soundscapes of Alvin Lucier would've seemed unlikely -perhaps most of all to Lucier himself; yet there he was, talking about Indonesian gamelan music with someone who was genuinely interested, and presenting musical displays of the physical properties of sound to an audience that by and large seemed to share (or at least appreciate) his obscure fascinations.

This was contemporary music programming that was stimulating and vital. And Zwilich continues to lend her time and prestige to American music and the music of living composers. The upcoming season of Making Music includes an unusual program called "Focus on Four." This event will be the culmination of what's billed as the Zwilich Composer's Workshop, wherein Zwilich and three colleagues (Milton Babbitt, Olly Wilson, and Christopher Rouse) have each chosen a young composer to receive the Carnegie Hall commission for a chamber music piece. The composers are all "out of school but under 35," Zwilich says, "where it's very easy to fall into the cracks." Each of the established composers will introduce one of their younger counterparts on stage.

Zwilich has referred to music as "something universal," which transcends such accidents of birth as nationality and gender. Her own music has evolved over the past quarter century in an effort to acknowledge and embrace that. She has carved her own way, listened to her inner muse and to her audience, and has struck a fine balance between the two. Some critics have complained that her recent style is too accommodating-as if accommodating the needs of the listener were somehow incompatible with the needs of music itself. Mozart would've had a lot to say about that; Zwilich certainly does. In interviews she is an eloquent spokesperson for music's need to be important to people, to have something passionate or expressive to say, and to say it well. In her compositions, she practices what she preaches. As a result, Zwilich's music is much in demand in the concert halls. Many of the world's greatest conductors have premiered her works: Pierre Boulez, Zubin Mehta, Kurt Masur, Sir Georg Solti, and Seiki Ozawa head a long and impressive list. Similarly, she's received commissions from the Boston, San Francisco, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh symphonies, the American Composers Orchestra, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and Orpheus, among others. Zwilich is currently working on her fourth symphony, commissioned by Michigan State University for its own orchestra. It is a telling collaboration: "It's wonderful to have major orchestras perform your work," she says, "but the future of music is the next generation. So there's something very exciting about having young musicians involved in the premiere of a new work." A shorter orchestral piece for the Westchester Symphony Orchestra is due in 1999 as well.

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's music is also amply documented on recordings. Check out the flowing conclusion of her Symphony No. 3, for example, or the athletic vigor of the Trombone Concerto, the dramatic finale of the Piano Trio, the classical precision and joie de vivre of the Concerto Grosso (After Handel), and you'll hear why she is an inevitable choice for Composer of the Year. Next year, someone else will be named Composer of the Year. And eventually, someone else will be named to the Composer's Chair at Carnegie Hall. It's inevitable. We can only hope that it will feel as right.

John Schaefer has been Director of Music Programming at WNYC Radio since 1991, and the host/producer of the new-music program, New Sounds, since 1982. He is author of the book New Sounds: A Listener's Guide to New Music.