IN SHORT; NONFICTION

TRACKINGS: Composers Speak With Richard Dufallo. By Richard Dufallo. (Oxford University, $35.) No one should require more of this book of splendid interviews. Still, how wonderful it would be if Richard Dufallo's ''Trackings'' rekindled the old passions and rancor surrounding 20th-century music before the composers and their scores fade into the next century. The interviews are with 26 men who explain what they have tried to do in their work since World War II. They talk and talk about how and why they tried to shift harmonies, rhythms, orchestration and scoring away from 19th-century traditions. Their talk is technical, as if they were speaking with a peer, which Mr. Dufallo, a conductor, indeed is. What they describe is fascinating, from new types of scoring to electronically synthesized music to stealing themes from other composers. A revealing anecdote comes from John Cage about a concert in the Netherlands at which several musicians preferred to drink too much and leave the hall rather than perform what he wanted. George Rochberg asks a telling question: ''Can we compose again with passion? That's what I miss in almost everything that's written these days.'' Suddenly, the avant-garde is old. Mr. Cage, the former enfant terrible, is 77 years old; Aaron Copland is 89. They all stuck to their creative guns without much carping about public indifference. I wonder, though, how these distinguished men, accused of writing awful music in their time, feel about the fame and fortunes earned by the cacophonous sounds of rock-and-roll. That is the only question Mr. Dufallo failed to ask.

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