In an age when music has become increasingly mechanistic and more concerned with sound than content; when the language of music has become a veritable tower of Babel addressing itself to minorities of minorities; when dense ingenuity, often accompanied by pages of notes explaining what it is doing, is hardly even penetrable by the eye let alone the ear, and memorability is often more minimal than the minimalists, Hans Gál is bound to be a lone voice. He is, after all, 95 years old and learnt his craft from distinguished masters of the 19th century, imbibing the classical tradition in a world which could still lay some claim to civilization: that is before the First World War set in train increasingly rapid developments in technology and a steady decline in standards. If the artist's task is to reflect the world around him, then he has done this admirably. If he aims to expose society's weaknesses, it would seem that the forces of evil are winning. If he aims to console and heal—creating images of reconciliation in a barren world, as Tippett so tellingly puts it—then Hans Gál has certainly played his part in this reconciliation and it is our loss that his music is so little known in this country. Surprising, too, for he has been with us for nearly 45 years, composing, conducting, teaching, lecturing, and playing, but having no gimmicks to offer, no ad-man to promote him; and thus, being an essentially private man, never seeking to impose himself—‘the most unpushy composer I have ever met’ as one German radio producer puts it—comparatively few have had a chance to discover his worth.

Among the Musicians in Umberto Grossato's band, which appeared regularly in cafés and restaurants around Venice in the 1920's, playing on board the ferry which at that time plied between Venice and Mestre, and occasionally even in the prestigious Café Pedrocchi in Padova, was the bandleader's young son Brunetto, a child-prodigy whose violin-playing did much to increase the popularity of the band. Ever since his grandfather had given him a violin when he was four, with a nail put in its neck to mark a left-hand position, he had tried to live up to his grandfather's dictum that ‘even if you later become the greatest of gangsters, you will still end up in heaven if you are a violinist.’

Performers of 20th-century music have more information about how the music is to be performed than do performers of earlier music. Since the Baroque era, composers have become more explicit in their notation, greatly simplifying questions of interpretation. In addition to the advantage of explicit notation, performers can often have personal contact with a living composer about interpretative questions. In the case of Béla Bartók, there are also recordings of the composer performing his own works. Such recordings are useful adjuncts to the musical notation.

Quoted in Christopher Ford's profile of the composer, Crosse was referring—with characteristic wit—to the need to find his own personal style in order to escape classification as merely a disciple of a ‘Maxwell Davies School’. Crosse's Renaissance techniques and motivic delineation had always differed significantly from Davies's and in the 12 years since that article appeared, as if to prove this point, Crosse has pursued a different direction, centred on the drama and contrasts possible in the concerto or ‘concertante’. The development of his now highly personal style can be recognized as a synthesis of his earlier experiments in serial procedures. Between 1972 and 1977 Crosse wrote three concertantes: Ariadne, for oboe and 12 players (1971–2), Thel, for flute, two horns, and double string septet (1974–6), and Wildboy, for clarinet, cimbalom, and seven players (1977); pieces which share similar origins and musical processes, and provide explicit examples of his compositional methods. To illustrate this personal style, I will compare the origins and musical materials of the first two concertantes and fit them into the context of his output in the period from 1972–7.