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.

The two works are the Piano Concerto No. 2 of 1966 and the Symphony No. 3 of 1968, which, like Lees's earlier works, continue to show ample evidence of this composer's ability to extend his traditional vocabulary in new and meaningful ways, without compromising his hard-won, individual style. Both are written in a sharp and incisive style that is full of tension. Vigorous and irregular rhythms that leave the listener no chance to relax his concentration are combined with pungent harmonies that are always imagined with a careful ear for the larger context. Large-scale form is controlled with dramatic insight, especially in the symphony, which is a work that breaks much new ground in its approach to symphonic form, while the concerto is a full-blooded and compact virtuoso work, of great character and imagination, with a sharp and incisive wit and a symphonic tautness.

• Maw's Five Interiors (Stephen Walsh)

• Smalley's Melody Studies I and II (Brian Dennis)

• Goehr's Symphony in One Movement (Douglas Young)