Composer-Performer Collaboration (CPC) has become a distinct research field in the last twenty years. This article explores a long letter written by Justin Connolly to Neil Heyde in place of final workshops for Collana, for solo cello. The letter sheds forensic light on Connolly’s musical vision and approach to collaboration, revealing a distinctive combination of pedantic concern for details (with concomitant precision of notation) and great flexibility. Connolly encourages the performer as an active participant, with responsibility for a ‘parallel universe of discourse’. Heyde responds directly to extracts from the letter and outlines the shared working context. Connolly’s letter confirms the significance of the dimensions of notation, gesture and instrumental choreography that have emerged in the CPC literature but affords a perspective not shaped by academic demand characteristics. It presents an especially sophisticated approach to what recent writing has called empathetic embodiment.

Methods of critique fashion their possible outcomes. Rita Felski (2015) makes the case for ‘postcritique’, a method of reading in which texts are worked with, understood in their own right, such that a more diverse range of styles and arguments might be understood. Robert T. Tally Jr. (2022) rejects this method, contending that postcritique claims to serve the text under analysis but, in adopting a standpoint of placid agreement, facilitates a mode of reading that diminishes the potency of the text itself and critical dialogue more generally. This article argues that postcritique has dominated the discourse surrounding ‘The New Discipline’, a manifesto of sorts written by composer Jennifer Walshe. The article offers an alternative critical reading of ‘The New Discipline’, arguing that the text is itself a Jennifer Walshe piece. The composer performs the role of a musicologist who falsely declares newness, inconsistently includes and excludes artists, and deploys a vague, if not contradictory, definition of bodies. The manifesto is addressed to an undisclosed but seemingly specific audience. I argue that these apparent shortcomings evoke themes of performance, irony and fictionalisation that are found elsewhere in Walshe’s work and make such a reading licit.

Neoclassicism is now largely eschewed within New Music. While there seems space in our pluralistic scene for modernist, postmodernist, minimalist, performative and conceptual music, the compositional values of neoclassicism seem out of step and anachronistic. This article advocates that classical principles should be put back on the table, arguing not for a return to a historical neoclassicism but rather for idiosyncratic forms of neoclassicism that emphasise characteristics such as entertainment, playfulness, clarity, forms of tonality and engagement with received form.

The radical expansion of the written score as art object in late-twentieth and twenty-first-century music resulted in a rapid porting of extramusical objects into music’s textual realm, including a wide array of linguistic graphemes newly treated as musical material. This article suggests that the modern compositional use of scored parentheses, although rarely undertaken for identical aesthetic or formal ends, nevertheless always involves the generation of a virtual site for intimacy between irreconcilable bodies. Parentheses radically reveal the fragile contingencies of fallible musical embodiment: every– thing, every language, every intention, every body as foreign to everything else and yet nothing as foreign at all. Musical parentheses are the privileged site where the I knows that ‘I am not you’, that ‘you are not I’, that ‘you I do not know you I do not know’ – which is to say: they will reappear by the end as love.

This article presents an overview of findings from an ERC-funded DigiScore project that investigates how digital technologies are reshaping music creation, performance and accessibility. Digital scores, defined as interactive interfaces for musical ideas, enable innovative compositional approaches, immersive performance experiences and inclusive practices. Drawing on nearly 50 case studies across five continents, the research highlights four key impacts: (1) enhanced interactivity and multimedia integration; (2) non-linear and real-time compositional methods; (3) novel performance opportunities in physical and virtual spaces; (4) broader accessibility for diverse musicians and audiences. An overview of case studies by the project’s partners and principal investigator illustrates how digital scores impact the creative practices of composers and performers, while also influencing audience engagement and fostering collaboration and participation. Despite challenges in balancing technological complexity with usability, the findings demonstrate how digital scores democratise music-making, offering new creative possibilities and redefining contemporary musical practices.

As intelligence technology advances, the boundaries between humans and machines blur, prompting questions regarding human identity and agency. While opera has traditionally explored such existential tensions, contemporary productions often emphasise technological narratives, potentially overshadowing human-centred perspectives. This article investigates music’s expressive potential to bridge these divergent viewpoints, positing it as a distinct form of ‘listening’ to and ‘knowing’ the world. Through a case study of Hao Weiya’s chamber opera AI Variation (2021), it probes how a musical approach communicates intricate ethical and existential questions posed by advancing AI technologies. The findings reveal that music’s non-linguistic nature creates an experiential space to explore, feel and contemplate human experiences. Orchestral voices craft sonic landscapes that invite contemplation on being and perception in an AI-driven world, and music conveys complexities beyond what words alone can express. The article illuminates how music contributes to a humanist response to technological advances, enriching cultural and philosophical discourse.