(Editor's Note: in the late 1960s Tempo featured a regular column written by the late Hans Keller entitled ‘The Contemporary Problem’ – an attempt, in the author's inimitable fashion, to probe behind current musical events and put them in perspective. Partly through the nature of that perspective the feature generated lively correspondence. It is our hope to provide a similar service for the 21st century with a new, occasional series of articles by different hands. Rather than suggest that contemporary music has (or is) a problem, or for a single author to encompass it about with obiter dicta, the idea is for writers to sound off about the broader issues of performance, asthetics, comprehension and silent assumption that happen to concern them and which underlie much contemporary musical activity and composition – to ask questions which have been around as long as music has, which rarely get asked and which perhaps have no definitive answer. (They are perhaps all aspects of the largest question of all: ‘What is new music FOR?’)

The editor will gladly consider topics, proposals, or answers to these PQs from all quarters. Meanwhile the following essay by Julian Silverman, sparked off by reading the letter from the Scottish composer David Johnson in Tempo 222 (October 2002) – itself prompted by features in two previous issues – seems a good point at which to launch this occasional series. Nothing is more perennial, especially in this age of maximum availability of recorded repertoire, than the question of what do about the past, which is always with us.)