In a characteristically bold assertion, the philosopher and composer Roger Scruton once claimed that ‘the lingering backward glance towards that which can never be recovered (and which is falsified in the very yearning for it) has been the greatest vice of English music in our century. Like every form of sentimentality, it involves a “turning away” from the present reality, a desire to lock emotions into a narrow and predetermined world of fantasy, a world which you yourself control’.

EG: In 1960, in your article ‘Sonate, que me veux-tu’ you introduce the word ‘anonymity’ or anonymat. Here is what you say: ‘The great works of Joyce and Mallarmé are the data for a new age in which texts are becoming – as it were – anonyme – y parlant de lui-même et sans voix d'auteur.’ (Here you are quoting Mallarmé's famous letter to Verlaine.) And you go on: ‘If I had to name the motive underlying the work I have been trying to describe [the Third Sonata], it would be the search for an “anonymity” of this kind.’

This search for an ‘anonymity’ of that kind, is it part of your motive for using serial techniques altogether?

This article explores aspects of identity which underlie compositional processes in James MacMillan's music. This is not intended as a critical discourse on identity as such, since this highly contested area is subject to ‘extensive and intensive controversy about how identity should be conceptualised in the wake of various anti-foundational critiques to which it has been subject’. Since in the course of this article I will use the essential concepts of ‘Scottish identity’ and ‘Catholic identity’ in particular as points of reference, it is necessary to show on what basis these terms have been conceived in relation to MacMillan.

James MacMillan was 50 years old on 16 July 2009 and his birthday was celebrated by musical institutions not just in Britain, but internationally. As a composer and conductor in residence for the BBC Philharmonic he led performances of his Symphony No.3: Silence and The World's Ransoming. The Royal Northern College of Music staged a three-day celebration of his work while The Sixteen toured his music under conductor Harry Christophers. His recent St John Passion was performed in Berlin and Amsterdam by the London Symphony Orchestra and in Rotterdam concerts of his music were given by the Rotterdam Philharmonic, Rotterdam Chamber Orchestra and the Hilliard Ensemble. The widespread regard for MacMillan's music evidenced by these performances is the culmination of a steady rise in popularity, undisputedly catalyzed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra première of The Confession of Isobel Gowdie. In a 1993 Tempo article on MacMillan, music critic Stephen Johnson describes the premiere thus: ‘there have been warm receptions for other new works at Promenade Concerts, but the thunderous, ecstatic welcome given to James MacMillan's The Confession of Isobel Gowdie at the 1990 Proms was unprecedented’.

In April 2010, the Guildhall School of Music recognized German composer Helmut Lachenmann's expertise in extended instrumental techniques, inviting him to give the keynote speech at a research day dedicated to contemporary performance practice; in May, he had a Fellowship of the Royal College of Music conferred upon him for his achievements as a composer; in June, the London Symphony Orchestra performed Lachenmann's Double (Grido II) for string orchestra, in doing so becoming the first non-BBC British orchestra to have performed his music; and in October, the Southbank Centre presented two days of Lachenmann's music including performances by the Arditti String Quartet and a much expanded London Sinfonietta, the latter broadcast on Radio 3. Outside London, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group gave a performance of his most recent work, Got Lost for soprano and piano, and the University of Manchester presented a mini-festival dedicated to his music. This roll call of events might be seen then as the celebration to be expected as a noted composer passes a milestone, but Lachenmann is a composer who – despite his age – could until recently have escaped such attention in Britain. In 1995, Elke Hockings wrote in these pages that, while enjoying ‘an exalted reputation among a small circle of English contemporary music enthusiasts, […] to the wider English music public he [Lachenmann] is little known’ and critical reception has been mixed, often extremely negative. Introducing Lachenmann to an audience at the Southbank Centre in October, Ivan Hewett described him as ‘a composer we don't know well in this country, an omission we are gradually repairing’.

Philip Moore (b. 1943) has had a distinguished career as a cathedral musician, organist and, increasingly in recent years, as a composer. He began his career as a music master at Eton College and subsequently held a number of important positions, firstly at Canterbury and Guildford Cathedrals and latterly as Master of the Music at York Minster (1983–2008). His impressive catalogue of 400 works contains a substantial body of church music, but he has also written instrumental music and some larger works with orchestra including an organ concerto. His music draws on a wide sphere of influences with a strong tilt towards Vaughan Williams, Howells and Britten, plainchant and Duruflé and those whom he regards as the great classical architects of music: Bach, Brahms, Mozart and Hindemith amongst many others. On 20 November 2010 his new cantata Ode to St Cecilia was premièred in Guildford Cathedral. The composer has said that the genesis and design of the work derives from Britten's St Nicholas to which he hopes it will be seen as complementary. This interview took place in October 2009 before a recital devoted entirely to Moore's organ music at St Paul's Cathedral in London.

• Boston, Mass.: concertos by Schuller and Birtwistle Rodney Lister

• London: Turnage's ‘Anna Nicole’ Martin Anderson

• Manchester: Sally Beamish Paul Conway

• Manchester University: Pierre Bartholomée Tim Mottershead

• London, RAM: Elena Firsova Martin Anderson

• London, Maida Vale: Grahm Fitkin Jill Barlow

• Brisbane: Havergal Brian's ‘Gothic’ Symphony Calum MacDonald

• Elaine Gould's ‘Behind Bars’ Julian Anderson

• Birtwistle's ‘The Mask of Orpheus’ Michael Hooper

• Adolf Busch biography Erik Levi

• Glenn Watkins's ‘The Gesualdo Hex’ Rodney Lister

• Further reviews Peter Palmer, James Percival, Clemens Gresser, John Wheatley

• Young Polish Composers Colin Clarke

• Egon Wellesz Paul Conway

• Rolf Liebermann's ‘La Forêt’ Peter Palmer

• Further Reviews Tim Mottershead, Clemens Gresser, Paul Conway, Bret Johnson, Jill Barlow