The eclectic taste of Thomas Adès has led writers to comment upon the plethora of influences in his music. Adès himself has made no secret of such composers, frequently performing the works of those who have been a particular source of inspiration to him. While the present study initially acknowledges this vast array of disparate styles, the second section considers the extent to which Adès is influencing himself. It identifies certain trends that are evolving across his oeuvre, and central to this is the distinctive treatment of a pair of intervals, evident in the opening bars of almost a quarter of his published works to date.

While the influences of others remain undoubtedly significant to any discussion of Adès, it is now also appropriate to examine the way in which some of the composer's own characteristic gestures form musical relationships between his works.

This essay traces the development of Justin Connolly's music from the orchestral Antiphonies of 1966 through to the Piano Concerto of 2001–3, showing how within a remarkably consistent idiom there has been a slow process of focal change from a predominantly vertical structuring to a graciously complex, vertically rich, energetic linearity, embracing a wide variety of works on its unhurried journey, and by no means excluding drama and expressivity from its uncompromising idiom. Most of the analytical writing is on the Piano Concerto, which in its way summarizes all that precedes it, showing how a metaphorical labyrinth can be interestingly kaleidoscopic in its richness. The essay also demonstrates how, like several other British composers of his generation, Connolly has found his own individual, structurally significant way of bringing together techniques from the early Renaissance and the 20th century.

This study explores Adams's interpretation of Baroque genres and his creative methods that draw on a relationship between past and present in the Violin Concerto. In this composition, Adams not only revives Baroque musical language through new performance practices, but also draws together diverse musical idioms, creating a way to communicate with our society. Repetition plays a large part in the Violin Concerto, but more in the sense of variation and sequences than of literal repetition. On the other hand, techniques such as the Lombard Snap and “unequal-note’ (notes inégales) are not treated in a traditional way. Structurally, although there is no trace of motivic connexion throughout the work, the music does not lack stylistic unity. The ‘harmonic’ language is generally consonant, which reflects Adams's honor of conventional musical sound. The Concerto certainly demonstrates the composer's creative imagination.

This essay analyses the temporal structure of Roger Reynolds's The Palace (Voicespace IV) for baritone and four-channel computer generated sound (1978). Since 1970, Roger Reynolds has used logarithmically expanding and contracting proportions to define sectional durations in his music to the near-exclusion of other designs. Though this general practice is common to many of the composer‘s works, these proportions are employed in this one's formal structure in an idiosyncratic way that is truly unique to the piece. Using sketches from the composer's Library of Congress archive, the analysis demonstrates that the composer's selection of numerical data used to determine sectional boundaries in The Palace is intimately tied the work's conceptual impetus, Jorge Luis Borges's poem of the same title. Reynolds's formal design also reflects larger trends in Borges's writings, notably his short stories.

• Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2011 Paul Conway

• New York: Nico Muhly Rodney Lister

• Manchester University: Julio d'Escrivain Tim Mottershead

• Aberystwyth: Nicola LeFanu's ‘Dream Hunter’ Paul Conway

• Further reports from Manchester, London and Boston Tim Mottershead, Jill Barlow, Rodney Lister

• György Ligeti Symposium Mike Searby

• Conversations with Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf Peter Palmer

• Richard Steinitz's ‘Explosions in November’ John Fallas

• Thomas Wilson biography Paul Conway

• Mieczyslaw Weinberg roundup & ENO's ‘The Passenger’ Martin Anderson

• Kurtág complete string quartet works Arnold Whittall

• Hosokawa orchestral music Colin Clarke

• Ben Johnston string quartets Paul Rapoport

• Further Reviews Bret Johnson, Arnold Whittall, Tim Mottershead, Paul Conway, Colin Clarke, Peter Palmer, Calum MacDonald