At sixty-five a new and sustained inspiration had set him off writing poems in emulation of the fourteenth-century Persian lyricist Hafiz. … Reflection and evocation sometimes have an almost mystical intensity as past insight and experience are concentrated in fresh perceptions of beauty. The poet can see the woman he loves in every shape and stimulus of the sensible world … In loving her, he loves the world and whatever god is immanent in it; none of these loves is merely a derivate of any other, they compose a single embracing reverence…. He also discovers a sense of unity across historical time…. Life resolves into archetypes. Even so, the freshness and value of each new occasion stays intact. Archetype, recurrence, myth – the perspective they offer never blurs or attenuates the single instance.

Messiaen's concept of ‘personnages’ is essential to his compositional and analytical thinking. Yet it is not described in his Technique of My Musical Language of 1944, and it features only sporadically in the secondary literature. There are references to personnages in Messiaen's booklet notes to recordings of the Turangalîla-symphonie, but only the basic premise of personnages rythmiques is discussed there. Messiaen's preliminary thoughts on the rhythmic aspect of the process are given in his 1939 article ‘Le rythme chez Igor Stravinsky’, but those two pages only permit fairly general comments and the label ‘personnages’ was not yet in use. We are introduced to personnages in detail at various points in his seven-volume Traité de rythme, de couleur et d'ornithologie – a compilation of Messiaen's writings from 1949 onwards, edited by Alain Louvier and Yvonne Loriod and published between 1994 and 2002, the order of material having been decided by Messiaen shortly before his death. For those patient enough to negotiate its convoluted presentation, the Traité allows the reader a unique insight into Messiaen's thought-processes, his musical and technical influences, analytical style, and non-musical interests. The present article seeks to disentangle and clarify the concept of personnages, to gather the threads from various analyses in the Traité in which they appear, and to trace their progress from Messiaen's Stravinsky analysis to a pinnacle of complexity in the Turangalîla-symphonie.

Judith Bingham was born in Nottingham in 1952, and grew up in Mansfield and Sheffield. After making considerable self-taught progress in composition while still a schoolgirl, she attended the Royal Academy of Music (1970–73), where her teachers were Malcolm MacDonald, Eric Fenby Alan Bush and John Hall (composition), and Jean Austin-Dobson (singing). In 1972 she was awarded the Academy's ‘Principal's Prize for Composition’ for the ‘Fires of London’-influenced chamber-piece Maelstrom. After obtaining her Performer's Certificate, she continued her composition studies privately with Hans Keller (1974–80), and took singing lessons from Eric Vietheer and David Mason. In 1976 she was selected for the BBC's ‘Young Composers' Forum’ on the strength of two scores: The Divine Image (1976) for harpsichord, and The Fourth Universe (1976) for mezzo-soprano and harpsichord.

The influence of the rhythmic and harmonic ideas derived from Anthony Gilbert's study of birdsong made itself apparent in his works of the mid and late 1970s, firstly in the radio opera The Chakravaka-Bird, many sections of which are based on overlapping short figurations (Gilbert calls them ‘mantras’) that, like the calls of a large body of different birds singing together, are repeated at measured intervals to produce larger rythmic cycles; and then in Towards Asâvari, which was written in Australia in the spring (that is to say the Australian spring – between August and December) of 1978.

We trust the word is not too forthright, but ‘puerile’ might legitimately be levied against the new opera Berenice by Johannes Maria Staud. Premièred on 12 May this year as part of the 9th Munich Biennale for New Music Theatre at the city's Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz, this first attempt at the genre by the Austrian-born composer Staud renders, blow by blow, the short story of the same name by Edgar Allan Poe. The libretto, by Durs Grünbein, sticks closely to the famous writer's narrative like epoxy resin. Played without an interval, Berenice comes in at just under two hours; it seemed like two days.

A multimedia explosion of musical styles, political satire and dramatic intrigue, the Polish National Opera ended their trio of Polish operas in April 2004 at Sadler's Wells with Krzysztof Penderecki's Ubu Rex. Based on Alfred Jarry's absurdist play, Ubu Roi – in other words Poles (1888), Ubu Rex (1991) resonates well with Poland's political situation in 2004, prompting us to read the opera as an insightful exploration into the identity of a nation navigating the legacy of Soviet rule and its emerging future in Europe.

Judith Weir's Tiger under the Table, premièred by the London Sinfonietta under Thomas Adès in March 2003, is a reference to an exceptional energy in the lower registers, exemplified by an angry bassoon and twanging double bass. The gruff and dark-hued emphasis on the bass line in the opening section is in stark contrast to the typically bright and shiny ‘Judith Weir sound’ as exemplified by Moon and Star and the Piano Concerto, for example. The feeling of an underground upheaval recalls, rather, the ominous stringed-instrument slapping from the fifth movement of Weir's We Are Shadows. A heavenly string quartet offers repose: as in Vaughan Williams's Tallis Fantasia, it operates on a different plane from the rest of the ensemble. There ensues a quick parade of trios and quartets made up of unlikely combinations, including an ill-fated attempt to form a piano concerto. Finally, all 14 players join together and the composer truly becomes herself again in a witty and jazzy coda of prodigious invention. The pointillism here is engagingly full of heart. Glissandi threaten to destabilie the structure, but the work ends optimistically, with a warm unison.

Although much of the best of Britten's unperformed early music has come to light since his death, there are still a number of substantial works to be discovered. The latest to emerge – appropriately premièred at the Royal College of Music where Britten was a student – is the ballet score Plymouth Town, which he composed during his summer holidays in 1931, following his first year at the College. The idea for a ballet was suggested by Violet Alford, an authority on folklore and particularly Basque dancing, who in July 1931 was a fellow lodger in the house in Bayswater where Britten had a room.

Rhian Samuel is 60 this year. Never one to follow the conventional paths in contemporary composition or music-making, her works are sometimes tricky to pigeonhole, though this does not seem to have impaired their performance or appreciation. Her new piano quartet, Light and Water (2003), received its première as the centrepiece of the opening concert of the Hampstead and Highgate Festival, given by the Fidelio Quartet and framed by Schumann's op. 47 Quartet and the Elgar Quintet (in which they were joined by violinist Katherine Gowers).

Two major additions to the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group's ‘Sound Investment’ scheme were unveiled on 31 May in a concert of rare intensity in the CBSO Centre.

Denis ApIvor, who died at the age of 88 on 27 May 2004, was one of the most versatile composers of his generation. Just over a month before his death, though gravely ill, he attended a New Music Brighton concert at Brighton Unitarian Church featuring the world première of his Second and Third String Quartets, given by the Kingfisher Quartet. His presence lent a special significance to the event and the image of the ailing composer, his wheelchair stationed directly at the feet of the players, experiencing the first readings of his own works is one that resonates in the memory.

Last year I was offered for review a recording of a live song recital promoted jointly by the British Music Information Centre and the English Poetry and Song Society. Its attractions included a cameo appearance by tenor Ian Partridge and an important first recording of Ivor Gurney's Lights Out cycle, in the order proposed by Richard Carder. After hearing the disc, however, I thought it kinder to several of the other performers not to publish an opinion. What a pity, it seemed, that the organizers had failed to draw upon those strikingly fresh and technically secure voices that have recently emerged from our music colleges.

Both for the quality of the repertoire and the influence of the composers, the ‘New Jewish School in Music’, the subject of a two-day conference on 10–11 May 2004 at the University of Potsdam, Germany, represents a significant aesthetic movement in the history of 20th-century music. To apply the term ‘school’ to a varied group which lasted from 1908 till 1938, and spread from St. Petersburg, through Russia, to Berlin and Vienna, as in the conference title (it is also that of a new book by Dr Jascha Nemtsov, conference organizer), begs the question of the extent to which there was a unanimity of aesthetic purpose and style. Yet while this is still open to debate, what emerged from the conference was a common agenda and a sense that it was certainly ‘new’ and young, since all the composers were keenly interested in contemporary, avant-garde music. Though diverse in idioms, they all shared a profound involvement with the revival of a folk culture and its assimilation into art music.

ELLIOTT CARTER: What Next? Valdine Anderson, Sarah Leonard, Hilary Summers, William Joyner, Dean Elzinga, Emanuel Hoogeveen, Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra c. by Peter Eötvös. ECM New Series 1817

HENZE: Scorribanda Sinfonica sopra la Tomba di una Maratona; Antifone; Piano Concerto No. 11. Christopher Tainton (pno), Norddeutschen Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester c. Peter Ruzicka. Wergo 6657 2

KLETZKI: Symphony No. 3, In Memoriam; Concertino for Flute and Orchestra. Sharon Bezaly (fl), Norrköping Symphony Orchestra c. Thomas Sanderling. BIS CD-1399.

GEORGE CRUMB: The Complete Piano Music. Makrokosmos 1; Makrokosmos 2; Five Pieces for Piano; Gnomic Variations; Processional; A Little Suite for Christmas Philip Mead (pno). Metier MSV CD92067 (2-CD Set).

Psanterin: Anthology of Israeli Music for Piano. Liora Ziv-Li, Allan Sternfield, Ora Rotem-Nelken, Herut Israeli, Tomer Lev, Michal Tal, Natasha Tadson, Yuval Admoni, Astrith Baltsan, Allon Goldstein (pianists). Israel Music Center IMCD: 104–112 (9-CD set) produced by The Israel Composers League and the Israeli Music Center (IMC), 55 Begin Rd, Tel Aviv, Israel. (Tel/fax:00-972-(0)3-562 1282. Email: [email protected]