KLEIBERG: Lamento: Cissi Klein in memoriam1; Symphony No. 1, The Bell Reef2; Kammersymfoni (Symphony No. 2).3 Trondheim Symphony Orchestra c. 1Eivind Aadland, 2Rolf Gupta, 3Christian Eggen. Aurora ACD 5032

FLEM: Piano Concerto; Solar Wind; Ultima Thule per Orchestra.1 Sergei Ouryvaev (pno), St Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra c. Alexander Kantorov; 1Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra c. Terje Boye Hansen. Aurora ACD

PERSEN: Over Kors og Krone. Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra c. Christian Eggen. Aurora ACD 5029

NYSTEDT: Apocalypsis Joannis, op. 115. Mona Julsrud (soprano), James Gilchrist (tenor), Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir c. Aril Remmereit. Simax PSC 1241 (2-CD set).

TARIK O'REGAN: ‘Voices’. Dorchester Canticles; Bring rest, sweet dreaming Child; Colimaçon; Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis; Care Charminge Sleepe; 3 Motets from Sequence for St Wulfstan. Choir of Clare College Cambridge with James McVinnie (org), Rafal Jezierski (vlc), Adrian Spillett (perc), Helen Tunstall (hp). Collegium COLCD 130.

This article offers a short overview of the development of listening theories concerning Western art music since the end of the eighteenth century. Referring to Michel Foucault, I consider such theories as discourses which produce ‘power effects', such as the training of listening attitudes, or the construction of specific spaces, such as the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth. During the eighteenth century, predominant discourses considered musical pieces as orations and, since the nineteenth century, as complex organisms or structures. In the last third of the twentieth century a focus on sound, evinced for instance by the field of ‘sound studies', has produced a new configuration that dissolves the prevailing model of structural listening. This perspective may shed light on some technical features of contemporary compositional styles, which I examine by considering the use of melodies, gestures and loops in two compositions by Fausto Romitelli and Simon Steen-Andersen.

The first part of this article was published in Tempo No.194 (October 1995), pp. 2–11, and dealt with Goffredo Petrassi's first two Concertos for Orchestra as well as other works, notably the major choral compositions Coro di Morti and Noche Oscura. At the time Petrassi was 91 years of age and it was intended to complete the article within a few issues' time. Other commitments supervened, however; but the composer's death has given added urgency to the need to publish a second instalment concentrating on his concertos of the 1950s. A third and final instalment, covering Concertos 7 and 8 and some of the remarkable compositions of Petrassi's final period, is planned for 2004.

As the first Doctoral Composer-in-Residence of the Royal Opera House and Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Philip Venables has – some might say bravely – chosen to adapt 4.48 Psychosis, the last play by the late British playwright Sarah Kane. Brave for several reasons. Kane's work is renowned for its naked, sometimes brutal, expression and themes, and the nihilism and violence of her plays have caused critical uproar in the past. Moreover, her estate has until now been understandably protective of her legacy; Venables's opera, premiered in May, is the first adaptation they have permitted, and came with instructions to remain as true as possible to the text.

YUN: My Land, My People!; Exemplum in Memoriam Kwangju. Chorus and State Symphony Orchestra of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, c. Byung-Hwa Kim. Symphonies Nos. 1–5. Filharmonia Pomorska Bydgoszcz, c. Takao Ukigaya. Richard Salter (bar). CPO 999 165-2 (4-CD set)

‘To be interested in Satie one must be disinterested to begin with,’ declares John Cage of his contradictory relationship with the older composer. If paradox summarizes this particular discourse between an interested pupil and his predecessor, however, it is both a compositional and musicological discourse exploring the juxtaposition of explicit historicism and aesthetic distance, or ‘disinterest’. The project, or rather the problem, of musical ‘neutrality’ is one that Cage inherited from his idol and subsequently adopted with enthusiasm, as his stubborn pre-occupation with Erik Satie's 1918 symphonic drama, Socrate, evinces. Cage's initial encounter with Satie's work seems quickly to have inspired a commitment to interrogating modernism's engagement with history. Having been introduced to Socrate by Virgil Thomson in a performance that, in Anthony Tommasini's words, ‘profoundly changed Cage, [who] grew to revere Satie’, Cage immediately set out to adapt the score for Merce Cunningham's ballet Idyllic Song in 1947. Denied copyright permission for his two-piano arrangement, Cage resourcefully set out to re-write the musical accompaniment for the ballet (and appease the disobliging publishers) more than two decades later in 1969, retaining Satie's original phrasing in order to preserve Cunningham's choreography and sardonically re-titling the piece Cheap Imitation.

Contemporary music festivals are a neatly packaged way of encountering a variety of new and recent pieces, where someone else has done the hard work and chosen them for you. In our online/streaming life, rather than surfing Bandcamp or similar and following our own predilections, these festivals, in a healthy way, force you to confront your musical barriers and to harmonise your prejudices. In the UK and Ireland, Ilan Volkov's Glasgow Tectonics, Eamon Quinn's Louth and Graham McKenzie's Huddersfield seem to me the most interesting at the moment. There are, of course, other useful and enterprising festivals: some are a mixed bag of old and new, some are composer-led or have other agendas, so they have built-in filtering – in other words, prejudices. Festival directors have their likes and dislikes too, I guess, but the evidence from the three mentioned above demonstrates an openness and a researched risk-taking: Huddersfield, with McKenzie in charge, is more open than most, presenting quite a range of different genres and media.

Between 1976 and 1986 the Dutch group Hoketus were central to the creation of the sound and aesthetic of the Hague school. Through their rehearsal process they challenged and redefined the role of the composers who wrote for them in relation to the ensemble, and in doing so they challenged conventional notions of composer privilege and power. While not going as far as free improvisation groups in erasing the boundaries between composers and performers, they created a situation in which traditional hierarchies were overturned. Without ever claiming co-ownership of the resulting works, the group actively participated in the creative process and so could claim a higher degree of ownership and responsibility for the music they played than is usually the case.

Howard Skempton's distinctive presence on the British musical scene, and his prolific compositional output since the mid-1960s, have presented commentators with certain challenges as they contemplate which labels to apply, and, for music analysts, which techniques to deploy. Skempton's own comments, in various interviews and essays down the years, remain the ideal starting point, suggest a range of contexts, some of which underpin this study. With reference to a few of his smaller vocal and keyboard compositions, the quality of constantly shifting rather than strictly fixed elements is explored. When pitch materials conform more or less exactly to tonal or modal tradition, rhythm is particularly important as a determinant of subtle shifting. But it is often the case that pitches identities themselves shift between functions best defined as tonal scale degrees at one extreme and post-tonal pitch classes at the other. The result is a very personal and unaggressive kind of modernism.

CECILIA MCDOWALL: Seraphim; Dance the dark streets; Dancing fish; Not Just a Place; Dream City; The case of the unanswered wire. Kathryn Thomas (fl), Catriona Scott (cl), Suzanne Willison (hp), Tippett Quartet, Orchestra Nova c. George Vass. DUTTON Epoch CDLX 7159

In the first composition class I ever took, the professor began by asking us why we wanted to compose. This was a question I had been wrestling with for some time; I had just switched programs at my university and had needed to justify, to myself at least, why I should have taken the biggest risk of my academic career thus far. The question, put so baldly by this professor, had never actually been asked by anyone else when I announced that I wanted to change my course; secretly, I was glad of this, for I felt the answer was too personal and private and new to me to survive any kind of display, or attack.

St Albans: International Organ Festival 2005