For me music is language, and language is a “character-set in the possession of a linguistic community”.
The musical language of the present is essentially produced by aesthetic restraints, if not to say “reduced”, and therefore lives on evermore as “residue” of an ever-dwindling community. For each work a new language is invented – “ultimately, one must never repeat oneself” – but who can keep pace with “acquiring” these myriad languages? We have all but lost our common character set, our language, as a basis for communication.