The death of Luigi Nono in May 1990 has occasioned surprisingly little comment, at least as far as this country is concerned. On the one hand, this may reflect a general lack of interest in the period of high modernism during the 1950s and early 1960s; and an assumption that, unlike his contemporaries, Nono failed to adapt his idiom when the influence of the avant-garde began to wane. On the other, it may be a symptom of British insularity, especially as regards artists who acquire a subversive reputation through their association with radical politics. Indications are that the latter explanation is more accurate. Three new recordings, emanating from foreign sources, prove decisively that Nono modified his compositional methods quite substantially throughout his career.

It must have been in Hamburg during the winter of 1920–21 that I heard Busoni for the first time, as soloist in a concert directed by Werner Wolff-the son of the impresario Hermann Wolff, a former secretary of Hans von Bülow, who had also been at one time Busoni's manager. Werner Wolff, a fine musician and a conductor of the Hamburg Opera, was my teacher in harmony and counterpoint, and had invited me to be present during his rehearsals with the Hamburg Philharmonic. I was still at school - in my final year - and had to have special leave of absence for two days, something that was very rarely granted. But such was the reputation of Busoni as a world-famous virtuoso that the headmaster readily agreed.

Giacinto Scelsi, last Count of Dayala Valva and one of the most extraordinary composers of this century, died in Rome on 9 August 1988 at the age of 85 in the Policlinico Gemelli after an attack brought on by the sweltering Roman summer: he who never went to the mountains to avoid it, thinking that warmth could do him only good. After the Naples earthquake of 1980, which flattened the mediaeval hill town of Valva and with it the family castle and its library, Scelsi said: crolla il castello, crolla il padrone. The castle falls to bits and so does its master. Those of us who knew him in his last years remember above all the frail figure sitting on a couch below the two portraits that Dali had given the Eluards for a wedding present, doing ironic and at times testy battle with the world and old age, there in his overheated house across from the Roman Forum. With such a view, he used to say, what one does must be quite splendid or else a very bad joke. During his lifetime Scelsi refused to be photographed, did his best to avoid programme notes, and gave information about his life only when he chose to forget himself in conversation. Few of us cared to violate these rules, knowing that for a man who had dictated the mémoires of his future life they represented a kind of defence against a finality imposed from without. He sought something like this in his music as well, hoping it would seem only a snatch of what had been going on long before, of what would be going on long after.

Recently there has been a revival of interest in the music of Richard Strauss, and in Britain more attention has been paid to his lesser-known works. The symphonic poems such as Don Juan and Till Eulenspiegel, along with operas such as Salome, Etektra and Der Rosmkavalier, have never lapsed from the performance and recording repertoires. But the undeserved neglect of pieces such as the Duett-Concertino for clarinet and bassoon, and operas that rarely reach the stage in this country, such as Die Frau ohne Schatten, has begun to be remedied. A new development which can be seen as both cause and effect of this revival is the appearance of books in English dealing with Strauss and his music. These include recent reissues of Norman del Mar's three-volume Richard Strauss: a Critical Commentary on his Life and Works (1962–72, reprinted with corrections 1978) and Michael Kennedy's Master Musicians volume reissued with additional material in 1988. The study by Willi Schuh, whom Strauss chose as his biographer, was issued in 1982 in an English translation by Mary Whittall entitled Richard Strauss: a Chronicle of the Early Years.

In my review in Tempo 175 of the Etcetera disc (KTC 1071) of Lou Harrison's pieces for guitar and percussion, the Well-tempered Guitar was described as ‘a clever adaptation to magnetically adjust the frets on the guitar to produce alternative tunings’. This is misleading, and should have read ‘a clever adaptation using interchangeable fingerboards to produce alternative tunings’. It is the fingerboards that are held magnetically, not the trets themselves, so there is no possibility of individual frets or portion of them moving about the fingerboard (a guitarist's nightmare!) Mea culpa.