In tempo 91 I wrote an article on the recently discovered and published sketches of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. Since that time an equally handsome volume of sketches by Anton Webern has appeared. Studying the sketchbooks of a great composer is perhaps the closest we can ever come to experiencing the act of creation. It is still—inevitably—a second-hand experience, but one which enables us to follow the process of creation with more immediacy than does the analysis of an already completed score. If we analyze a finished work we can learn a great deal about the structure of that work in particular, and about compositional techniques in general. As composition progresses, the musical ideas with which the composer started out begin to develop according to their own inner logic. Eventually the composer is no longer in the position of dictating events but of attempting to discover and follow the logical development which the music itself dictates to him.

Andre Jolivet died in Paris in December 1974 at the age of 69. His untimely death caused deep distress to his numerous friends. For the French musica world it meant the loss of an important, original and imaginative composer, and there was, at least, the usual acknowledgment from official quarters. Otherwise it hardly caused a stir; and the press, which had always been so responsive to his music, remained strangely silent. This is all the more surprising as Jolivet, during the last thirty years, had been a frequent guest at international and national festivals, had been widely performed and acclaimed in the Western world, and was considered representative of a certain kind of new French music (though overshadowed by his friend and near-contemporary Olivier Messiaen).

The techniques and aesthetic of Xenakis's music have been widely discussed in books and articles—many by the composer himself. These issues belong to the ‘outside time’ characteristics of music which Xenakis has defined in his article ‘Towards a Metamusic’ (TEMPO 93). So far, however, there has been little or no detailed discussion of the ‘inside time’ aspect of his music, namely the problems relating to its performance, although it is generally known that many of his works—especially those where solo players are involved, such as Nomos Alpha, Mikka, Eonta, Herma, Evryali, Synaphai-Connexites—are exceptionally difficult to play. These problems are important and must be solved not only for the sake of satisfactory performances of Xenakis's music, but also because they raise wider questions concerning the further exploration of instrumental technique.