A composer with 164 works to his name is scarcely to be covered adequately in a single book. Ralph Scott Grover analysed the important pieces and some of the minor ones, also accounting, however briefly, for every single thing Rubbra wrote apart from the more ephemeral incidental music, and his book was no mere analytical tour de force but a labour of love. What could act as a complement and, hopefully, bring this extraordinary composer's music a little nearer the world of that nebulous entity ‘the music-lover’ is an account that dares a few unashamed similes and human comparisons. Rubbra, as was his good right, tended to confine comment on his own music to the kind of technicality also favoured by his first generation of apostles, so he might or might not have approved, even if this ‘new testament’ does its best to keep at a certain distance from a private life which he, a shy and reserved man, would have felt to be no-one else's business. What remains of him now is first and foremost his music, and it is too great to go on suffering its current neglect. It needs passionate advocates.

They may be hard to find, at least among leading performers. The best British conductor, when approached about Rubbra, confessed to me that he had never been able to enter into a relationship with his music.