After the completion of Preghieie—which had its first performance at the University of California, Berkeley, on 10 November 1962 during a festival of nine concerts entirely devoted to his music—Dallapiccola returned to and completed the score of Three questions with two answers, commissioned early in 1960 by the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. This request for an orchestral piece coincided with the beginning of work on the score of Ulisse, and the composer thought fit to utilize in the new piece the musical material he was going to exploit fully in the opera. It was, therefore, a sort of test, on a smaller instrumental scale, of the material which was to become the supporting and unifying element in Dallapiccola's magnum opus. Three questions with two answers was performed only once during his life, on 5 February 1963 in New Haven. Dallapiccola never thought it appropriate to publish what turned out to be his last orchestral piece; the score is now available (Milan: Edizioni Suvini Zerboni, n. 8155), and had its European première in London on 9 June 1977, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Zóltan Pésko.

Taking part in a hastily-prepared performance of a contemporary piece for five players, I found myself wondering yet again: whatever happened to chambermusic? While the piece we played is by now ‘old’ enough to be considered part of the standard 20th-century repertoire, the ad hoc nature of this performance necessarily involved the aid of a conductor—not only because the time at our disposal was inadequate, but also because four of the players didn't know the piece at all, not to mention the fact that two of them had never even met previously, let alone played together. Now while this particular set-up was admittedly an extreme instance, it was unusual only in degree; for it's by no means unique as an example of the sort of circumstances that have come to be accepted by players and audiences alike over the last 50 years or so.

Cause and effect? London is where more music is made than any other city in the world; it is also where there would seem to be more criticism of the orchestral diet. We are blessed with enough orchestras to create a shy, at which critics may hurl their balls—but never take home a prize, for they have come to the wrong stall. Indeed, when a prize is offered they themselves are too shy to accept. Coconuts seldom jump off perches of their own free will, just as orchestral managements are fearful of stamping their feet with frustration for fear of being asked—'now, now! how many should there be?'. But several recent occurrences tempt me to look over the edge.

My subject is ‘What violinists and pianists can learn from one another, technically and musically’. Some people may be surprised at the idea that this is a subject at all! Their doubts will only underline what seems to me to be a very widespread and disadvantageous division between the two spheres of musical activity. All performers are specialists and it's very easy for specialists to overspecialize, to separate themselves from others who are, in fact, engaged in precisely the same activity, which is—music.

The Mime of Mick, Nick and the Maggies—on Part II of Finnegans Wake by James Joyce—lasts about an hour. It is for soprano, tenor and baritone, seven female voices and six male, with an instrumental group of 13 players: flutes, oboes, clarinet (doubling contrabass clarinet), bassoons, 2 horns, trumpet, 2 trombones, percussion, keyboards, cello and bass. There is also a ‘Manager’—either ‘live’ or on tape. The text selected is from a comparatively self-contained section of Finnegans Wake, separately published by Joyce as a fragment under this name in 1934 but now just the first section of Part 11, sometimes referred to as the Children's Night Games. It fuses children's games with life/sexual games, describing humiliation and extreme loneliness and the realizing creative power of building from these with the mythologies of the fall, of parenthood and of the family, with jealousy and incest, closing with the almost central Joycean prayer: ‘Loud, heap miseries upon us yet entwine our arts with laughters low’. In it, the two sons of HCE, Shem and Shaun, now as children called Glugg and Chuff, are outside their father's pub in the evening with their sister Issy and her seven girl friends (though they sometimes disturbingly multiply into a lunar monthly 28). The game is Angels and Devils and Glugg is the devil, Chuff Saint Michael, whilst the girl/angels or harpy/maggies think of a colour—but twist it to the colour of their knickers. Heliotrope is the rather unlikely colour and three times Glugg is allowed to advance and try three guesses.