Our current music culture is more diverse than ever. It offers the sight of a dizzying auditory panorama that extends far beyond the individual horizon. Imagine: if you could listen to that immense soundscape in its entirety, thanks to the zoom-out function of a Google Earth-like app – what would you hear? That must be a deafening cacophony in which all imaginable musical languages, mixed languages, dialects and sub-dialects rage through each other. In ‘Componisten van Babel. Veelstemmigheid in de gecomponeerde muziek van nu in Nederland en Vlaanderen’, Joep Christenhusz examines how this Babylonian diversity affects the way we relate to music today. How is music composed and listened to in a time when opera and symphonic music can easily go hand in hand with pop, rock, house and jazz? How is it experienced in a world in which traditional musical forms and styles enter into a vital alliance with modern technology, new media and the multi-sensory mindset that is characteristic of contemporary visual and event culture? In ten essays, Christenhusz shows how the hybrid 21st-century way of experience takes a resounding impact in the work of just as many composing peers from the Netherlands and Flanders.