Occasionally, in the history of operatic art, great works, with no pronounced revolutionary tendencies, yet models of simplicity, of sincerity, of artistic integrity, have been subjected to the most savage criticism, as unintelligent as it was undiscerning. We remain astounded at the lack of insight, of common-sense on the part of cultured critics. Even la Traviata was held up for censure as “prurient, foul and hideous”; whereas, in the whole of Verdi's work, there is nothing more poignant and sublime than Violetta's appeal: “Dite alia giovane.” Carmen was stigmatized as “grossly vulgar and vile,” whilst Vincent d'Indy—amazed at the aberrations of men—sadly remarked that the “music seemed crazy to nearly everybody.”

With the exception of a few small-scale pieces programmed by the more adventurous contemporary music ensembles, the music of Salvatore Sciarrino has not been performed frequently in this country; BBC Radio 3 has given occasional airtime to larger works, but we have yet to hear much of his most important music in any form. This article should act, I hope, as a pointer to readers who might wish to explore his output on disc, which currently is really the only way to do so in this country.

Recently there has been a revival of interest in the music of Richard Strauss, and in Britain more attention has been paid to his lesser-known works. The symphonic poems such as Don Juan and Till Eulenspiegel, along with operas such as Salome, Etektra and Der Rosmkavalier, have never lapsed from the performance and recording repertoires. But the undeserved neglect of pieces such as the Duett-Concertino for clarinet and bassoon, and operas that rarely reach the stage in this country, such as Die Frau ohne Schatten, has begun to be remedied. A new development which can be seen as both cause and effect of this revival is the appearance of books in English dealing with Strauss and his music. These include recent reissues of Norman del Mar's three-volume Richard Strauss: a Critical Commentary on his Life and Works (1962–72, reprinted with corrections 1978) and Michael Kennedy's Master Musicians volume reissued with additional material in 1988. The study by Willi Schuh, whom Strauss chose as his biographer, was issued in 1982 in an English translation by Mary Whittall entitled Richard Strauss: a Chronicle of the Early Years.

As it stands at present Bliss's Colour Symphony is a revision made in 1932 of a work dating from 1922. The historical background of the work is the Three Choirs Festival, and especially Elgar, at whose suggestion Bliss produced a work for the Gloucester Meeting. This is Bliss's first symphony. In the chronological list of his works it comes after the Mêlée Fantasque for orchestra and the Incidental Music to The Tempest. It was followed by the string quartet of 1924, the manuscript of which was lost, and the next composition for full orchestra was the Hymn to Apollo, dated 1926. Between the time when the Colour Symphony was written and that when it was revised, Bliss had written a number of works not only musically important but significant because they showed a rather different manner of expression and way of thinking. Among these works was Morning Heroes, a large-scale choral and orchestral composition, in reality a choral symphony (1930). It was after Morning Heroes was finished that Bliss turned once more to the Colour Symphony. He took it in hand afresh and feeling that his grasp of orchestral manipulation had become stronger, he refashioned the whole work, leaving only the third movement in its original shape. In its actual state, therefore, the work is fundamentally different from the original.

It was 1970. I was a student in Warsaw. Once a week our composition class would gather at the Academy for an analysis course. We were an odd bunch, a Hungarian pianist, a black Cuban composer, a conductor, two spirited Polish girls, and myself. But we were also typical of the sort of international group that had assembled in the Polish conservatoires at that time—musicians brought together by a common fascination with the Polish School, which was still very much in full flight, and by a determination to unravel its technical and aesthetic mysteries.

Sur Incises, first performed in 1998, is the most recent major work by Pierre Boulez, but there has been very little published writing discussing it, although Boulez himself discussed the piece in a lecture released on DVD. Like many of his recent works, Sur Incises reworks existing material – taking the short piano piece Incises and expanding it into a large-scale work for three pianos, three harps and three percussionists. This article examines how the gestures, harmonies and even the instrumentation of the earlier piece are ‘refracted’ – presented in multiple overlaid versions as if a prism had revealed the possibilities inherent in the original material. Sur Incises is discussed with reference to common concerns in Boulez's work since the 1970s – its use of quasi-thematic ‘signals’ to mark structure, its use of luxurious harmonic fields and chord multiplication, its virtuosic toccata material, and its use of the SACHER hexachord.

‘In the winter [of 1910–11 Stravinsky] went with Maurice Ravel to Varese, an Italian town not far from Como, found in a stationer's shop an exercise book and, tempted by its presentation and the quality of the paper, he and Ravel bought one copy each.’ For the next two years Stravinsky carried this book from ‘The Lindens’, a pension in Clarens, to Monte Carlo, Paris, Venice, to his summer home in Ustilug in Russian Volhynia and finally back to the Hotel du Châtelard in Clarens, and in it he wrote the first draft of The Rite of Spring.

Much of contemporary western art music relies on objectivist and individualistic frameworks of intellect which oppose any focus on subjectivity, embodiment or emotion. These approaches deny composers, players and audiences the powerful experiences facilitated by works which are of body and of emotion. We suggest that by facilitating a return to body and emotion in sound we create potential for deep, cathartic, and transformative psychophysiological states. We argue that these states can create shared experiences that directly resist the isolating, homogenising, socially apathetic and narrowing path paved by frameworks of intellect. This refusal can facilitate collectivised movement towards an ethics of care, through mutuality, solidarity and empathy. This extends further than musical practice and builds potential inroads towards greater social and political transformation. We offer a toolkit of actions and frameworks that enable embodied and emotional sound use: intensity, stillness, improvisation, collectivised praxis and uncanoning.

THE MILKEN ARCHIVE OF AMERICAN JEWISH MUSIC. Naxos American Classics 8.559400 through 8.559425 and upwards.

Although Benjamin Britten is incontestably the best known English composer of his generation he is young enough for a few lines of biographical introduction to be not yet superfluous. He was born at Lowestoft, November 22nd, 1913. He began composing at an early age, and has rescued some of the material of these youthful efforts in a “Simple Symphony” for strings. While attending Gresham's School at Holt, Norfolk, he had lessons at holiday time from Frank Bridge for composition and Harold Samuel for the piano. From 1930 to 1933 he studied at the Royal College of Music, where his teachers were John Ireland for composition and Arthur Benjamin for the piano. The first of his works to attract general attention were the choral variations, A Boy was Born (1932), and a Phantasy Quartet for oboe and strings which was performed at the Florence (1934) Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music.

During the orchestral year just concluded, about 83,000 young people living in the metropolitan area of Washington, D.C. heard 43 concerts played especially for them by the National Symphony Orchestra. Another 41,000 high-schoolers from all over the United States were our guests for 30 Music for Young America concerts played in the beautiful Pan American Union building between April 17 and May 21, after the close of our regular season.

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).

On a gloomy winter's night in Dalston what could be better than Kammerklang at Café OTO? Out of the cold and into a packed house – standing room only for many of us, and sauna-like levels of humidity – for an evening in which an audio-visual piece about bells by Christine Sun Kim and a new string quartet by Lisa Illean frame the main event, two new pieces by the Canadian composer Cassandra Miller.

When an old man looks back on his life, it is natural that memory should soften disagreeable incidents and recall only the pleasant. This is perhaps the reason why Richard Strauss, too, confessed that the happiest memories of his life were connected with the town of his birth. He spent more than a quarter of his life within the city limits of Munich, and whenever he retired to his Garmisch eyrie or left it for his travels throughout Germany, Europe and America, to conduct the works of his great predecessors or interpret his own, his way always led him through his home town.

Brazil's foremost ensemble of the late twentieth century, Grupo Novo Horizonte de São Paulo, transformed Brazilian contemporary music by cultivating a new mixed-chamber repertory and giving sustained support to a generation of emerging composers. That this cosmopolitan group took, then outgrew, the Pierrot ensemble as its cornerstone signals the medium it forged: a localized, evolving spectacle with a richly internationalist heritage. This article offers a panoramic view of the musical, intercultural and historical contexts that underpin Grupo Novo Horizonte's practices and legacy. Analysing landmark works by Sílvio Ferraz, Harry Crowl and others allows us to draw further connections between the group, the Brazilianness of late twentieth-century compositional aesthetic, and the realities of contemporary classical music-making in Brazil.