New Music thought and compositional praxis has excessively focused inward as a source of inspiration. In the last ten years, multidisciplinary composition has offered one possible solution to this problem. By combining music with theatrical elements and digital media, composers have produced works that are ‘not for the ears alone’. This paper offers a typification of its most novel aspects, and traces them in the author's own creative work, which additionally include the use of borrowed material as a means for establishing referentiality and elaborating semantic narratives.

A performer of Luigi Nono's late works is often faced with crucial questions regarding interpretation and technical details. An important tradition has evolved in performing these works, nevertheless it is not always easy to find the necessary information to play them adequately. This article attempts to answer some of the technical and interpretational questions in the context of Das atmende Klarsein and A Pierre – Dell'Azzurro silenzio, inquietum. Our hope is that it will contribute to the discussion about authenticity and freedom of interpretation and provide flutists with practical information not found in the scores.

The music of British-Albanian composer Thomas Simaku (b. 1958) bears the hallmarks of both his formative training and working life in Albania, and the widening of musical palette that came with his move to the UK in 1991. In this article the music from the late 1990s to the present day is considered, with particular attention to more recent works. An overview of some stylistic and technical aspects of this music is offered through analytical observations centred on three dualities: simplicity and complexity, the individual and the group, and stasis and movement. This wide-ranging account aims to open the door for further scholarship around this rich and multifaceted music.

The centenary year of one of the giants of 20th-century music has been and gone. It was all but ignored, so far as the UK is concerned, by his publishers, the musical establishment, the BBC etc. There had been vague plans to mount a number of relatively large-scale performances and broadcasts, to stage his two short operas for the first time and so on. They vanished. Music is a business like any other. Under the auspices of the Stefan Wolpe Society (USA), his daughter, the pianist Katharina Wolpe, managed to put together a short series of concerts in London recently, in which a few of his works received staggering performances before a very few people. The last of these, which would have seen the first performance for 2–3 decades of Wolpe's enormous Enactments for 3 pianos – had to be abandoned at the last minute for sudden lack of funds!

John Cage’s stated opinion regarding the original version of Cheap Imitation – for solo piano – was that it constituted a breach with what he considered the proper role of the composer to be. Despite the fact that the actual pitch content of Cheap Imitation was derived through consultations with the I Ching, and that the rhythmic and metric structures were appropriated from Satie, Cage reserved for himself a great deal of composerly control dictated only by his personal taste: the particular kind of control which, in 1970, ran counter to what he had been doing and writing about for years. In this sense, Cheap Imitation represents a watershed point in Cage’s career, away from the radical indeterminacy of the 1960s and back toward more traditional ideas of notation and composition, containing a balance between elements that are systematized, appropriated, and randomly generated. The work as a whole does not simply re-embrace determinate notation, though Cage’s composed choices are strikingly reminiscent of similar processes from his much earlier works. As William Brooks notes, ‘Cheap Imitation looks and sounds far more like pieces from the early 1940s than like any of its immediate predecessors.’

Deirdre Gribbin's piano concerto, The Binding of the Years, written between 2009 and 2012, was given its UK première by soloist Finghin Collins with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Alan Buribayev at a Maida Vale Studio concert on 15 March. Its evocative title refers to the gathering and securing of 52 reeds that symbolized the old years in Aztec culture; that civilization's rituals connected with fire and time form part of the inspiration behind Gribbin's new work.

MAXWELL DAVIES: De Assumtione Beatae Mariae Virigins; Brass Quintet; Beacons of Hope; Commemoration Sixty; Blind Man's Bluff; Prayer of Thanksgiving in Times of Terror; A Sad Pavan for These Distracted Times. London Sinfonietta c. Oliver Knussen; The Wallace Collection; Central Band of the Royal British Legion c. Ted Whealing; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Central Band of the Royal British Legion, Trumpets of the Royal Military School of Music – Kneller Hall, London Symphony Chorus c. Peter Maxwell Davies; Lucy Shelton, Clare Booth; Choir of Her Majesty's Chapel Royal, St. James' Palace c. Andrew Gant; Pavel Haas Quartet. MaxOpus Custom Compilation CDs.

MAXWELL DAVIES: Naxos Quartets Nos. 5 and 6. Maggini Quartet. Naxos 8.557398

The veteran Italian composer Goffredo Petrassi died on 2 March, aged 98. Not only was he a vital figure in the development of Italian music in the 20th century, but also had a significant international impact though performances of his compositions, his work with the ISCM and as a conductor and adjudicator. He was especially renowned as a teacher: many important figures in the music of our time studied with him at some period. Here two friends pay tribute.

Christopher Butterfield is a composer and composition teacher. His music has been performed across Canada and in Europe, with recordings on the CBC, Artifact, and Collection QB labels. He is currently the Director of the School of Music in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Victoria. Christopher was born in 1952 in Vancouver, BC. He studied composition at the University of Victoria with Rudolf Komorous and at the State University of New York at Stony Brook with Bülent Arel. He was a performance artist, rock guitar player and composer while living in Toronto between 1977 and 1992, after which he returned to the University of Victoria as Assistant Professor of Composition.

I studied composition with Christopher between 2000 and 2005. Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to sit down with him in Victoria. During our interview, I asked him about his life and work, and for his thoughts on how Czech-Canadian composer Rudolf Komorous has influenced composition in Canada over the last few decades.

The aesthetic of fault, failure, breaking off or breaking down is a diverse phenomenon pervading a multitude of areas in daily life, art in general, and medial contemporary music in particular. In addition to its destructive element, an error always allows the opportunity to look behind the façade and to comprehend mechanisms in systems. As soon as a function is impaired or defective we learn more about the operations of that system – be it biology, psychology, informatics or any other branch of science – and this holds especially true for medially conveyed, digital content. In a reality increasingly capitalising on digitally transported content this viewpoint gains growing social as well as artistic poignancy. This article explores the conception and connotation of error in general and, specifically, in the field of digital media before discuss resulting implications for the arts and giving examples of how to harness their attributes. Finally, it also reflects on the author's motivation in approaching the principle of error, and reflects upon how this subject is substantially influencing my own current pieces.

Listening to Luigi Ferrari, the Wexford Opera Festival's outgoing Artistic Director, one cannot understand why many of the rare operas Wexford is famous for reviving are not staples of an often rather repetitive repertoire. Perhaps their problem is that, to a degree, they require an audience to think, rather than merely emote. That was Wagner's problem.

MANSURIAN: Monodia. Viola Concerto (‘…and then I was in time again’); Violin Concerto; Lachrymae; Confessing with Faith. Kim Kashkashian (via), Leonidas Kavakos (vln), Jan Garbarek (ss), The Hilliard Ensemble, Münchener Kammerorchester c. Christoph Poppen. ECM New Series 472 7842 (2-CD set).

ELLIOTT CARTER: Dialogues; Boston Concerto; Cello Concerto; ASKO Concerto. Nicolas Hodges (pno), Fred Sherry (vlc), London Sinfonietta, BBC Symphony Orchestra, ASKO Ensemble, c. Oliver Knussen. Bridge 9184.

‘The Tend'rest Breast’: settings of women’s poetry by QUILTER, BRIDGE, GURNEY, LENNOX BERKELEY, IRELAND, ALASTAIR KING, MADELEINE DRING, MONTAGUE PHILLIPS. Georgina Colwell (sop), Nigel Foster (pno). Dunelm DRD0237.

‘Strings in the Earth and Air’: settings by MOERAN, WARLOCK, GEOFFREY STERN. Paul Martyn-West (ten), Nigel Foster (pno). Dunelm DRD0249.

In its unswerving devotion to new music at its most uncompromising, the Flemish Transit Festival represents a model of the kind of festival that has now almost vanished from Britain. Based in the intimate university town of Leuven, the 2012 festival was the thirteenth: 48 hours of music and events concentrated into a weekend, running from Friday night to Sunday (26–28 October). Located mainly in the unprepossessing concrete 1970s STUK arts centre (with surprisingly good acoustics), the 12 events (plus pre-concert talks) followed upon one another with a rapidity that almost negated the opportunity to draw breath, let alone eat in between.