Happily Ever After is a 45', 38" piece of tape music built from the recordings of 64 different people telling stories that begin with "once upon a time" and end with "happily ever after." The stories were recorded by composer Randy Hostetler over the course of several months in the mid-'80s and then "positioned" in stereo space in the order they were recorded -- earlier recordings to the left, later recordings to the right. Hostetler leaves the recordings largely untouched except for mild cuts -- pauses are added, phrases brought back in refrain, occasionally loops are created -- reminding me somewhat of the work of Canadian Dan Lander. Not all stories go on at once, and there is even occasional silence. The general effect of the piece is similar to being at a cocktail party and walking about, listening to different conversations -- you get pieces of all the stories but never the whole thing. This is the chief draw of the piece -- wanting to hear the rest of the story! At least that's what kept me listening for three quarters of an hour (besides a stodgy editor who insists I actually listen to what I review!). (Yes, last time I checked we weren't Rolling Stone -- ed.) After listening to "Happily Ever After" (several times, in fact), I'm left with mixed emotions. On one hand, I can clearly tell that great thought went into the piece's structure. Its form is drawn from classical forms involving repetition and development, and it's complex enough to reward multiple hearings. Also, there is a certain beauty in the "melody" of the speech patterns of the disparate storytellers. Ultimately, though, this piece is about storytelling, and it falls down in the substance of the stories themselves -- they tend to be anecdotes rather than stories and just aren't satisfying enough to reward me for making the effort to follow their plots.