The project of introducing an unknown repertory into discourses on music can be approached in a range of ways. The writer can make a case about its regrettable neglect and its unjustified exclusion from a historical canon, or can argue for its (political) relevance to the present. Or s/he can simply try to persuade readers of its aesthetic qualities: this third desire might well drive the first two, however covertly. The path I take here is unabashedly more ambitious. In attempting to open the hearts and minds of the uninitiated reader to a composer little-known outside Switzerland and Hungary, I will suggest that he offers us a significantly new way of thinking about music history in the 20th century as a whole.