For many years Gunther Schuller was at the center of the classical music world, as a player, composer, conductor, writer, record producer, polemicist and publisher for new music and jazz, educator, and president of New England Conservatory. His book, entitled, "Musings: The Musical Worlds of Gunther Schuller: A Collection of His Writings," is intriguing as a historical document and deserving of commentary. About the first third of "Musings" concerns jazz. These essays are pithy takes on important issues or seminal figures in jazz. Thus, Schuller covers the definition of jazz, its early history, the nature of form--"We must learn to think of form as a verb rather than a noun"--and looks at Ellington, Cecil Taylor, Omette Coleman, Paul Whiteman, Scott Joplin, Sonny Rollins, Lee Konitz, and Alec Wilder. The remaining two-thirds of "Musings" examines the world of contemporary classical music in sections titled "Music Performance and Contemporary Music" and "Music Aesthetics and Education." These essays first appeared in print from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s, a seminal cultural and musical period. It should come as no surprise that Schuller displays a large degree of growth, even a complete change of viewpoint, during this period.