The liberation and establishment of a peoples' democracy in Czechoslovakia gave a tremendous impetus to musical life throughout the republic. Not only were the ravages of war being made good but new conditions and opportunities were being created for the growth of music. Composers in an outburst of activity were producing works which not only reflected the bitter experiences of the war, but the optimism of a new life. Traditionalists like Vítězslav Novák who was born in 1870, and Josef Foerster, then in his eighty-sixth year, were composing alongside their own pupils and those of Janácek. Alois Hába, who had founded schools of microtonal music, was still experimenting with quartertones and at the same time producing cantatas based upon the diatonic system. Pavel Bořkovec, a pupil of Suk and a romantic at heart, together with Jaroslav Rídký were producing works in established styles and idioms and passing on their working methods to their many pupils. Others like Emil Hlobil and Emil Burian continued to compose in the traditions of Czech romantic music almost untouched by modern trends. New names were springing up everywhere. Composers who had matured during the occupation years had by 1946 grown into artists to be reckoned with and alongside them were musicians who were about to mature.

The first complete biography of Alois Hába, who is now in his early seventies, is being prepared by Dr. J. Vyslouzil, lecturer in musicology at the University of Brno, and I owe thanks to him for valuable co-operation in selecting and analysing examples of Hába's work. Few other composers have followed as clear cut a pattern of a life's work as Hába, who in the years 1921–23 made a significant breakthrough in several directions in his first mature works. This gave him enough material for development as a composer, theoretical thinker and teacher to last a lifetime. Of these works I have selected three, all written in the quartertone system, and hope to show in what way Hába was ahead of his contemporaries at that time.

In the Introduction to his study of the Parry Collection of Yugoslav folk songs Béla Bartók contrasts ‘lexicographical’ and ‘grammatical’ principles in the systematic grouping of folk melodies. Although the former makes it possible to locate a melody by comparatively simple means, Bartók states, the latter is to be favoured; it is of higher importance “to get a clear idea of the relationship of melodies than to be able to locate them easily”. He then enumerates the components of his own grammatical system which, in order of weight, include: section structure, metric (syllabic) structure, rhythmical character, final notes of sections (caesurae), range, and so forth (cf. Plate 1 column headings).

Susanne Langer's codification of the process whereby the most strongly defined of two or more simultaneously presented art forms will swallow the others is peculiarly applicable to the problem of filming opera, an art form which itself illustrates her thesis in its transformation of words and drama into musical entities. In a filmed opera the cinematic side of the enterprise should not be a mere substitute for the opera's dramatic as opposed to musical elements, although it becomes so if a stage performance is filmed with entirely fixed cameras. It must in fact treat the opera as an entity and not fall into the trap of expanding or dwelling on the dramatic angle alone. The result of such indulgence would be a distortion which several operatic films in the past have produced. The drama balloons far beyond the composer's balanced creative integration, and swallows the music which then becomes no more than a background score. In the BBC Television film of Billy Budd, the producer Basil Coleman avoided this pitfall with conspicuous success. At the same time, he did not make the mistake of a timid use of the camera which while preserving opera's peculiar relationship between drama and music produces a dull film, but allowed it to be true to its own medium as well as to the music-drama. The setting on board HMS Indomitable would present the obvious attraction of pretty camera work around and about one of the most photogenic subjects in existence. Shots like this however were cut to a minimum, even at such a heaven-sent opportunity as the arrival of the pressed men, when a panoramic view of their approach over the sea would certainly have been justified. However the music renders all this sort of thing unnecessary. The sea, for instance, is never glimpsed in the film because in a sense it is always there in the music, or all that is needed of it. A shot of the boat load arriving from the Rights of Man would have usurped the function of the music at one of its most magical moments—Billy's bright fanfares on the wind, salt and clear as the sea air above, over an uneasy fade-out of the hauling song.

• Xenakis's Pithoprakta (Norman Kay)

• Birtwistle's ‘Chorales’ (Roger Smalley)

• Fricker's Fourth Symphony (Stephen Walsh)