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.

Despite the characteristic scepticism that British audiences reserve for musicians who cultivate more than one discipline, Vinko Globokar can be considered a phenomenon. Yet reasons can be adduced for his remarkable versatility. His jazz background has proved invaluable in his collaborations with exponents of free jazz and other improvising collectives. Improvisation has also been used as an educational tool. His close ties with Austro-German, French and Italian composition have given him significant insights into their historical development. Finally, his Slavonic origins have given him a unique view of the Western tradition, while heightening his awareness of various cultural, political and social problems, notably exile and alienation.

SAYGUN: Symphonies (complete); Violin Concerto; Suite for Orchestra. Mirjam Tschopp (vln), Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz c. Ari Rasilainen. 3 CDs available separately: CPO 999 819-2 (Symphonies 1, 2), 999 968-2 (Symphonies 3, 5), 777 043-2 (Symphony 4, Violin Concerto, Suite).

When the Swiss composer Heinrich Sutermeister (1910–1995) celebrated his 80th birthday in 1990, a discordant note was sounded by Antje Müller in the main Swiss musicological journal Dissonanz. Sutermeister had enjoyed his first major successes in Nazi Germany, and Müller now subjected this fact to more intensive scrutiny than had anyone before her, questioning how ‘neutral’ a creative artist can be in his dealings with a totalitarian state.

The glowing critical response to Georg Friedrich Haas's in vain (2000) has focused particularly on the visceral effect created by Haas's use of ‘endless’ scales, richly saturated microtonal chords, and passages that take place in total darkness. Discussion of these features has often led reviewers and commentators to use forms of description and praise which evoke the old (but lately rejuvenated) aesthetic category of the sublime. This article explores these connections with sublime aesthetics in more detail as a way of clarifying both philosophical and interpretative perspectives on in vain. The idea of the sublime serves as a thread connecting aspects of spectral technique and aesthetics, the mathematical visions of M.C. Escher, and the charged socio-political context in which the work was written.

The problematic relationship between UK composers and the Darmstadt Summer Courses is well known. Christopher Fox, Björn Heile and Martin Iddon among others have discussed why this platform for discussion and ideological conflict has not been to this country's taste. This article argues, however, that just such an event organised in the UK would enliven and enrich contemporary music making through increased knowledge exchange and collaboration. After exploring how Darmstadt operates within Germany, and its perception in the UK, a concluding tentative sketch will be made of how such a British Darmstadt might begin, and the benefits it would bring.

When a Western musician thinks of Israel, the immediate association is of incessant political conflict and terrorism, not the country's rich cultural life. Yet, for a state that has endured one terrorist outrage after another over the last four years, Israel's thriving contemporary music scene — a part of classical music events, blossoming with over 2,300 classical concerts a year — is an astounding feat. In March 2002, while biweekly suicide attacks ended the lives of over 120 Israeli civilians, concert halls were unbelievably full despite the fear, or perhaps just because of it, as a constructive escapism. A year later, still under shaky political and economic conditions, Avigail Arnheim, the director of music events at the Tel-Aviv Museum of Art, and Dan Yuhas, the newly-elected chair of the Israel Composers' League (and the music director of the Israel Contemporary Players) initiated preparations for three concurrent festivals of contemporary music in October 2004. A Western musician, not knowing the details, would think that they were planning events for Berlin and Munich audiences, and not for Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem listeners.

Wandsworth, National Opera Studio: Will Todd's ‘The Woodlanders’

There is a widespread perception that music and architecture are profoundly dissimilar, far removed from each other in the creative spectrum. While music is regarded as ephemeral, transient, involving vibration, pitch and time – you hear it, you feel it, its beauty is assigned to your memory – the general response to architecture is fundamentally different. Those homogeneous, concrete volumes and solid, three-dimensional forms are thought to occupy a permanent, static and unyielding part of our environment, a constant reminder of its unique presence in time, unrelated to any other art-form. Architecture just does not float away into space like music – as some might fervently wish! But music and architecture cannot possibly exist independently in hermetically sealed compartments – they are inexorably bonded together by their very nature and by the cultural history that surrounds them.

This article looks at a creative trajectory in my recent work, an ongoing exploration of how the coordination of and precise interaction between performers in music-performance can be considered a primary compositional parameter (and perhaps compositional material in its own right). This investigation began with a survey of performer interactions in Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps and older music of my own. This led to an interest in the entanglement of ‘instrumental theatre’ and compositional scenarios in which performer behaviours, in relation to coordination and interaction, contribute idiosyncratically (i.e. outside of the more typical interpretation/improvisation models) to the music.

It is only the naïve and the cynical who imagine that the creative artist can be visited unwittingly, without an act of volition, by genius. We cannot doubt that Britten's War Requiem, hailed by many critics as his masterpiece after its first performance in Coventry Cathedral, represents not only an effort to mark worthily the official commemoration of a triumphant recovery from the ashes of war but also a conscious resolve to consummate his whole creative activity to that date in the expression of a personal abhorrence of the bestial wickedness by which man is made to take up arms against his fellow. Even the ground plan of the Requiem reflects this desire to give all, setting up within the one frame the resources of works as contrasted in style as the Sinfonia da Requiem and Cantata Academica, the Nocturne and the Missa Brevis. Yet ultimately we can compare this work only with the operas in its vast scope, as also in its development from the contemplation of a dramatic conflict. In choosing so audaciously to juxtapose the Office for the Dead with Wilfred Owen's bitter war poems, Britten dare not rely merely on the anthologist's good taste that has served him well elsewhere. Unless these two sources could be made to engage with one another, violently if need be, the result could only be disastrous. By now we are all familiar with the pattern of correspondences and analogies he was able to uncover, and the uncanny appropriateness with which such a triple link was forged as that between the Abraham of the liturgical text, of Owen's poem and of Britten's own canticle. The present article attempts to trace some of the musical links that bind the work; that it perhaps fails to do this in tones of clinical objectivity may be pardoned by readers to whom the sounds of this masterly work are still an overwhelming experience.

In Volume 57/223 of Tempo, my book, A Comprehensive Biography of Gustav Holst, was critiqued by Raymond Head. Not being adverse to justifiable criticism, I can accept much of what he has to say. There are indeed some editorial problems. The index, in particular, was originally perfect, but had to be hastily reconstructed at the last minute due to a publication design change. It is also true that there are a number of misspellings—largely due to some faulty guesswork from partially legible manuscripts – but not nearly as many as implied by the critique, especially when one considers the length of the work. And yes, I admit that I unintentionally included a misrepresentation of the physical Egdon Heath in Wareham. These items will, hopefully, be addressed and corrected in later editions.

SKALKOTTAS: Ballet Suite: The Sea; Four Images; Greek Dance in C minor. MITROPOLOS orch. SKALKOTTAS: Cretan Feast. Iceland SO c. Byron Fidetzis. BIS-CD-1384.

SKALKOTTAS: Piano Concerto No. 2; Tema con Variazioni; Little Suite for strings; Four Images. Geoffrey Douglas Madge (pno), BBC SO c. Nikos Christodoulou. BIS-SACD-1484.

Kevin Volans achieved remarkable fame in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the Kronos Quartet's recordings of White Man Sleeps and Hunting:Gathering. With record-breaking album sales, he was perhaps even one of the most accessible twentieth-century composers operating outside of the popular or film music spheres. Thirty years later, his position could not be more different. Volans's controversial 2016 keynote at the Contemporary Music Centre Ireland, entitled ‘If You Need an Audience, We Don't Need You’, announced most vehemently his current stance in its Babbittean (or, more accurately perhaps, Feldmanesque) denouncement of populism and the music industry. For him, the tactics of publicists and marketers engender a breakdown in respect between audience and composer, while short-form works required by festivals are the epitome of a composition culture in regression.

In the drawing room there is the scent of hyacinth. Japanese lamps brought back from a distant journey alternate with subdued lighting from lace-covered lampshades in a characteristically French style. There is a grand piano, a leafy tapestry, like a wood at twilight, and on the walls a picture in red and black by Roger Bezombes inspired by the ballet Cinéma. A bust of Jolivet by Joseph Rivière stands on the mantelpiece. Both east and west have made their mark on this friendly apartment. Even before Jolivet took me into his study I felt the presence here of the African sun, and the memory of ritual songs. I knew that this great composer preferred lyricism to all other things.