Conclusion

In this book’s conclusion, I argue that the guitar is an eminently portable object, a musical amphibian at home in all manner of styles. Smith Brindle, ApIvor, Wilson, and Bennett wrote music for the instrument that reflected this hybrid spirit: they strove for their music to “make sense,” at the same time as expanding what it meant for music to “make sense” at all. In this way, my narrow selection of repertoire might be seen to open out onto something broader: namely, a much-overlooked, pragmatic, and modest path that one might follow within the rhizomatic network that was twentieth-century modernism. Whether it leads somewhere illuminating is ultimately for the readers of this book to decide. I have merely tried to hollow out a small space for contemplation and to block out some of the ambient noise, so that these musical works might be heard once more over the competitive cacophony of history