The subject of modernism in early 20th-century British music is rarely examined: partly because it is often thought that British composers were not interested in the Modern Movement before World War I, and partly because in discussing Modernism (a convenient umbrella term for the whole cultural avant-garde whose components included Expressionism, Futurism, Primitivism and Surrealism) one must be prepared to engage subjects which, in this country, are normally considered Verboten. There is no doubt, for instance, that the development of the Modern Movement on the Continent was partly inspired by a widespread awareness of Theosophy, and the interest, which it encouraged, in such esoteric areas as Indian philosophy and astrology. In this article I want to look at this aspect of Modernism in relation to Gustav Hoist, and especially in The Planets (1914–16): his, and British music's, first striking testament to the Modernist outlook. The very bases of this work are Hoist's understanding of astrology, his friendships of the time, and his Theosophical upbringing.

Today's technocrats and their followers treat music as a message which the composer (source) sends to a listener (receiver). In this way they believe that the solution to the problem of the nature of music and of the arts in general lies in formulae taken from information theory. Drawing up an account of bits or quanta of information transmitted and received would thus seem to provide them with ‘objective’ and scientific criteria of aesthetic value. Yet apart from elementary statistical recipes this theory—which is valuable for technological communications—has proved incapable of giving the characteristics of aesthetic value even for a simple melody of J. S. Bach. Identifications of music with message, with communication and with language are schematisations whose tendency is towards absurdities and desiccations. Certain African tom-toms cannot be included in this criticism, but these are exceptional. Hazy music cannot be forced into too precise a theoretical mould. It may be possible later, when present theories have been refined and new ones invented.

In analyzing any composition, we retrace certain moments in the creative process. It is wholly unimportant whether the work arose through the conscious application of some compositional principle, or purely intuitively (in which case we presume that the author himself ‘didn't notice’ it). If we can observe an underlying principle, it has an objective reality, and we are therefore fully justified in investigating it and regarding it as part of the compositional process. The deeper we penetrate the musical fabric of a work, the more subtle and profound are the principles we uncover. By its nature, genuine analysis seems almost a reconstruction of the original process of composition. It is true that we are often unable to establish the order in which various principles arose in the composer's mind; but this, in the long run, is not really essential.

Though in existence for less than a decade, Basle's Paul Sacher Foundation has already achieved an importance as a repository for the music of the 20th century comparable only to the importance of New York's Museum of Modern Art as a storehouse for representative masterpieces of this century's visual arts.

In 1989, I bought a CD in Paris of the early piano music of André Jolivet. Like many non-French musicians, I had read the name of Jolivet but heard little of his music. Jolivet's reputation as Varèse's leading pupil and the extreme avant-gardist of the pre-World War II group La Jeune France seemed completely at odds with his conventional post-War music occasionally broadcast on Radio 3, such as the Concertos for Trumpet, Piano or Ondes Martenot–music which suggested not fully assimilated influences of Honegger or Hindemith, with little obviously adventurous about it in its rhythmically conservative phrasing and standard formal shapes.

Most critical commentary concerning John Adams's 1987 opera Nixon in China focussed on the opera's first act, a parodistic reenactment of the well-known ceremonial scenes associated with the China visit. It appears that Nixon in China is an opera in the traditional mould as Richard Nixon steps down the gangway of the Spirit of 76 to a hero's welcome. Yet beneath this veneer of realism lie rich subtexts. It emerges that what is really going on is a parody (in the satiric sense) of a grand opera, a parody in which issues of cultural representation and gender politics are worked out. These themes are brought to the fore in Acts II and III but have been ignored in most critical commentaries.

‘His Own Attempts at Explanation, just like his compositional work, lend themselves to misunderstanding’. This opinion dominates Webern literature now as in the past, though naturally not always in this formulation of Dohl's. Sometimes we read of contradictions, of imprecisions; errors of fact or of mental processes can be ‘demonstrated’; and, depending on the particular author's field of interest and study, these are treated with indulgence or gentle annoyance, with indignation or knowing dismissal. Who could expect of a composer—a composer, moreover, like Webern: naive, at times culpably naive, withdrawn from reality; with a music so ‘abstract’, so in need of help or redemption by means of interpretation—who could expect of such a composer pertinent and consistent, or at least apt, music-theoretical concepts or utterances? Hardly anyone, in fact, seems to have dared to expect this kind of thing of Webern so far. That this might indeed involve some daring can be recognized from the conditions, the fuss, and circumstance with which Webern is approached. Whether they have sprung from the soil of serial music or not, all the systematic investigations, the numbering of note-rows, classifying of pitches, durations and so on, considerations of ‘structure’ (many investigations, too, of ‘form’, of symmetries)—they all seem like precautions against the music. Since the music is not trusted, the traditional music-theoretical concepts presented by Webern (and Schoenberg, too) are also regarded as unsuited for coping with the music. Instead, attempts are made using, for instance, the idea of a cell (usually a three-note basic cell) and its metamorphoses—an idea which is at least as anachronistic as the traditional ones, is scarcely strong enough to bear the burden of explication, and is exactly as vulnerable to criticism on scientific and ideological grounds as a serious preoccupation with Webern's own statements is alleged to be.

The stylistic changes in György Ligeti's music since 1960 have in some ways mirrored those in the wider contemporary music world. In his music of the 1960s he displays an experimental and systematic approach to the exploration of sound matter which can also be seen in the contemporaneous music of composers such as Xenakis, Penderecki and Stockhausen. In the 1970s his music shows a more eclectic approach, particularly the opera Le Grand Macabre (1974–7) in which there is much plundering of past styles – such as allusions to Monteverdi, Rossini, and Verdi. From this work onward there would appear to be a complete break from the approach in his works on the 1960s.

In recent years there has been an increase in the quantity, if not necessarily the quality, of scholarly and popular writing on the histories of electronic music in Britain. In this literature, the contributions of Peter Zinovieff (b. 1933) and his computer-equipped electronic music studio to those histories have been variously exaggerated, underestimated and misreported. This article attempts to correct this misinformation, investigating Zinovieff's solo work and his collaborations with Harrison Birtwistle, Hans Werner Henze and others, through a critical discussion of two recent contributions to the discourse surrounding the compositions realised at Zinovieff's EMS studio in the 1960s and 70s.

• Los Angeles: John Adams's ‘The Gospel According to the Other Mary’ Michael Palmese

• London, Royal Opera House: Judith Weir's ‘Miss Fortune’ Paul Conway

• London, Coliseum: Detlev Glanert's ‘Caligula’ Guy Rickards

• London, Barbican Theatre: Glass's ‘Einstein on the Beach’ Keith Potter

• Birmingham, Symphony Hall: Jonathan Harvey's ‘Weltethos’ Arnold Whittall

• Further reports from Huddersfield, Manchester, Nottingham, Birmingham and London Paul Conway, Tim Mottershead, Peter Palmer, Jill Barlow

This year's Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music were plugged-in, wired-up, mixed-down, line-out. Scarcely a main-stage concert wasn't amplified, at the very least. More often, new works synthesised spatialised sound design, video material, lighting and electronics in high-tech, high-concept performances.

Music examples usually illustrate articles, but the present article is no more than an illustration appended to my analytic music example of the complete central song from Strawinsky's most recent composition (Spring, 1954), In Memoriam Dylan Thomas. I think that writers on music should be encouraged to keep to the music, and seriously contend that all the adverse critics of Schoenberg's serial technique, and most of the writers who pass for serial experts, are incapable of a serial analysis and have only the very vaguest notion of what makes a serial piece “tick.” They quote a bar or two—usually from the opening of Schoenberg's 4th Quartet—where the note-row is fairly obvious or, anyway, has previously been uncovered by someone else, and then proceed to let obscure theory take the place of clear if complex practice. The reason is simple: they don't hear the row, and if you are unable to imagine a row aurally, it is very difficult, usually indeed impossible, to trace it throughout a piece. Let me hasten to add that I should not dream of reproaching any critic with his tone-row-deafness if he left it at that: for all we know, he may otherwise be a musical genius. If, however, he professes to talk serial “shop” at the same time, I raise the strongest moral objections.

John Croft's ‘Composition is Not Research’ (TEMPO Vol. 69, No. 272 (2015), pp. 6–11) argues that, ‘the very idea that musical composition is a form of research is a category error’ (p. 6). My response argues that Croft's analysis is borne of a widespread, misguided and essentialist attempt to reduce all research to the paradigm of scientific method, and that he accepts this paradigm uncritically. Whilst asserting that ‘composition is research’ does not entail a category mistake (as the whole point about research is that it is not delimited in any way), assuming that all research must be reducible to the scientific paradigm of method does entail the requisite reification to constitute such a mistake. The imposition of this reductionist paradigm has a distorting impact on the Humanities more generally and, whilst these distortions are particularly acute with musical composition, that is no reason to single it out for persecution. I argue that where the tenets of scientific method are adopted outside of science, this constitutes, more often than not, superficial pseudo-science (or scientism), whereby the tenets of scientific method are fetishized and applied divorced from the complete scientific method and scientific objectives. I conclude that the Humanities would do better to develop its own paradigms – paradigms that are better suited and intrinsic to its respective disciplines.

Laurence Crane's music is often described as experimental or considered as a continuation of the English experimental tradition. In this first extended examination of Crane's music it is proposed that, instead of relying upon associations and aesthetic alignments, the music might be considered as experimental through a particularly experimental approach to performance. After a brief overview of Crane's output his position as a composer is considered within the context of the experimental music tradition. This tradition is then considered in relation to performance practice, both historical and contemporary. A selection of Crane's music is examined in the light of that practice, whilst aspects of the composer's approaches to tonality, instrumentation, form and notation are also highlighted.

BERNARD STEVENS: Piano Trio op.3; Sonata for violin and piano op.1; Trio for horn, violin and piano op.38; Fantasia on a theme of Dowland for violin and piano op.23; Improvisation for solo violin op.48a. The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Chamber Ensemble – Kenneth Sillito (vln), Stephen Orton (vlc), Hamish Milne (pno), Timothy Brown (hn). Albany Records TROY 572.

The Summers Night Project is an ongoing composer-mentoring programme established in 2018 by musicians Cat Hope and Gabriella Smart, with the support of the Perth-based new music organisation Tura New Music. The project aims to support and mentor emerging Australian female and gender minority composers to create new compositions for performance, with the aim of growing the gender diversity of composers in music programmes across Australia. Three composers were chosen from a national call for submissions, and works were performed by an ensemble consisting of members from the Decibel and Soundstream new music ensembles. Three new works were workshopped, recorded then performed on a short tour of Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne, Australia in July 2018. The project takes its name and inspiration from Australian feminist Anne Summers, author of the ground-breaking examination of women in Australia's history Damned Whores and God's Police (1975) and was inspired by her 2017 Women's Manifesto. This article examines the rationale for such a project, the processes and results of the project itself, and plans for its future.

This article is an interview with the Franco-Slovenian composer, conductor and trombonist Vinko Globokar, translated, edited and introduced by the author. It offers an overview of Globokar's musical development and a consideration of his artistic position, which straddles the worlds of composition and improvisation. Globokar's music combines complex organisation with an interest in non-hierarchical and improvisatory elements. He has always refused to pit the avant-garde claims of contemporary music against those of free jazz, his music embracing aspects of both, as well as of traditional Balkan musics. His genre-defying approach remains better known in continental Europe than in the UK or North America, and the present text is a contribution to the limited bibliography on Globokar in English.