From 1980 onward, the year when Ewazen finished his education and started his career, there was a significant change in his approach to composition. He discontinued writing atonal music. At first, he devoted himself to writing a lot of vocal music. He said, “after I graduated, that’s when I started to go back to write tonal music. I was writing music for voice and much of the music that I was writing for voice was very lyric, very tonal and song-like, and that’s how I kind of went back to tonal music. And then, when I was writing instrumental music, that also tended to be lyrical and tonal.”