If Mr. Gottlieb's redirection at the age of 49 broaches new musical landscapes, composers, not performers, dominate the advance guard, absorbing the exotic.

Not only have "Jewish composers and lyricists always dominated Broadway musicals" in New York City, but they were instrumental in the creation and development of genre of musical theatre and earlier forms of theatrical entertainment, as well as contributing to non-musical theatre in the United States.

In the 1970s, samba returned strongly to the air waves with composers and singers like Paulinho da Viola, Martinho da Vila, Clara Nunes, and Beth Carvalho dominating the hit parade.

BMI-affilated composers dominated country music in the 1940's and 50's and rock-and-roll in the 50's and 60's, and included Hank Williams, Chuck Berry, the Beatles, Paul Simon and the songwriters for Motown and the so-called Brill Building school, among them Carole King and Gerry Goffin.

The composer dominated the seven-member instrumental ensemble, drawing weird sounds from her cello and singing forcefully.

But he was certainly another composer of genius, along with Beethoven and Weber, struggling to find a voice for German opera at a time when Italian composers and singers still dominated European stages.

In C. Bryan Rulon's "Quintet Too Plus One," written for the group in 1987, the players virtually disappeared amid the tangle of electronic paraphernalia that littered the stage, while the composer dominated the scene with his synthesizer and a conductor, Joel Sachs, kept order.

If classical composers and conductors dominated performing musicians, spelling out the notes they should play and the way they should play them, they mirrored the authoritarian, hierarchical structures of a monarchy or a bureaucratized industrial state.

Two centuries ago, German-speaking composers dominated the world of instrumental music, and for their efforts, they lost their modifier.

The composer in him dominated the singer.