David Matthews was born in Walthamstow, London, in 1943. He began composing – with an attempt at a full-scale symphony – at the age of 16 but, being self-taught and formally unqualified in music, went to study classics at Nottingham University (1962–65; the university awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in Music in 1997). Starting in the early 1960s he was one of the musicians (along with his composer brother Colin and the composer and conductor Berthold Goldschmidt) who assisted Deryck Cooke in the preparation of what became Cooke's famous ‘Performing Version’ of the draft of Mahler's Tenth Symphony. Between 1966 and 1969 Matthews took lessons from Anthony Milner. During this period he was also working at Aldeburgh as an assistant to Benjamin Britten (1966–70); a few years later, it was to be in an improvised piano-duet version played by David and Colin Matthews that the partly paralysed Britten first heard his own Third String Quartet (1975).

Songs without Voices, composed in 1991–2, is a set of four pieces for small instrumental ensemble comprising flute, cor anglais, clarinet, horn, piano, violin, viola and cello, lasting about eleven minutes. It follows on naturally from Knussen's Whitman Settings which preceded it, as three of its four movements derive their main melodic lines from purely instrumental settings of Whitman texts from the collection Leaves of Grass. Indeed the first movement's source text, Soon shall the winter's foil be here, is placed by Whitman in the collection immediately after The Voice of the Rain, the final text of Knussen's Whitman Settings.

(Editor's Note: in the late 1960s Tempo featured a regular column written by the late Hans Keller entitled ‘The Contemporary Problem’ – an attempt, in the author's inimitable fashion, to probe behind current musical events and put them in perspective. Partly through the nature of that perspective the feature generated lively correspondence. It is our hope to provide a similar service for the 21st century with a new, occasional series of articles by different hands. Rather than suggest that contemporary music has (or is) a problem, or for a single author to encompass it about with obiter dicta, the idea is for writers to sound off about the broader issues of performance, asthetics, comprehension and silent assumption that happen to concern them and which underlie much contemporary musical activity and composition – to ask questions which have been around as long as music has, which rarely get asked and which perhaps have no definitive answer. (They are perhaps all aspects of the largest question of all: ‘What is new music FOR?’)

The editor will gladly consider topics, proposals, or answers to these PQs from all quarters. Meanwhile the following essay by Julian Silverman, sparked off by reading the letter from the Scottish composer David Johnson in Tempo 222 (October 2002) – itself prompted by features in two previous issues – seems a good point at which to launch this occasional series. Nothing is more perennial, especially in this age of maximum availability of recorded repertoire, than the question of what do about the past, which is always with us.)

The compositional output of Michael Finnissy includes several major cycles for piano solo, which stand out by reason of their dimensions and their scope. English Country-Tunes (1977/1982–85), Verdi Transcriptions (1972–92/1988–95/2002-), Gershwin Arrangements (1975–88) and Folklore (1993–94) are all long, technically demanding and full of expressive potential. Yet they have been outdone by Finnissy's most recent piano cycle: The History of Photography in Sound (1995–2001), a phenomenal endeavour, lasting over five and a half hours and employing every conceivable means of articulating musical expression and intellectual significance. Speaking of the scope of these works, however, does not merely entail their unusual length – although the extended duration, in comparison to what is considered customary for a solo piano piece, is indeed one of their prominent features. What is more significant here is their scope in terms of the wide array of ideas, concepts and statements that make up the musical text. In that respect, Folklore (like the other pieces mentioned here) is an unrelenting statement, reflecting upon or formulating a critique of many issues that are crucial to late-20th-century human existence. This article tries to demonstrate how all these layers of significance can indeed form the subject of a piece that is supposed to be ‘abstract’ (because textless, instrumental) music.

In your recent review of the Zemlinsky Quartets recorded by the Artis Quartet on Nimbus (Tempo 222, pp.47–8) you stated that regrettably these discs were no longer available.

I first bought a subscription to Tempo because I thought I ‘ought’ to do better at keeping up with contemporary music; but I continue to subscribe because I find it the most interesting reading on music I know. Informative, even inspiring, and my collection of CDs has grown in ways I never expected.

The centenary year of one of the giants of 20th-century music has been and gone. It was all but ignored, so far as the UK is concerned, by his publishers, the musical establishment, the BBC etc. There had been vague plans to mount a number of relatively large-scale performances and broadcasts, to stage his two short operas for the first time and so on. They vanished. Music is a business like any other. Under the auspices of the Stefan Wolpe Society (USA), his daughter, the pianist Katharina Wolpe, managed to put together a short series of concerts in London recently, in which a few of his works received staggering performances before a very few people. The last of these, which would have seen the first performance for 2–3 decades of Wolpe's enormous Enactments for 3 pianos – had to be abandoned at the last minute for sudden lack of funds!

Once again I have the pleasure of thanking various individuals for their welcome correspondence – specifically, Andrew Porter for a gracious acknowledgement (Tempo 221); Mark R. Taylor for some kind remarks and an intriguing observation (Tempo 222), and Michael Graubart for his extended and musicianly reflections (Tempo 221 and 222).

Picking the chocolate-coated plums – a traditional Polish treat – from the abundance of riches on offer at the 45th annual Warsaw Autumn Festival (20–28 September 2002) sets a delectable challenge. Most of the concerts were packed, and predominantly with young people; its events were held in venues ranging from the elegant National Philharmonic to the sleek Warsaw Stock Exchange; and a typically diverse range of contemporary music, programmed with insight and performed with great commitment, drew enthusiastic – and occasionally enthusiastically critical – responses from the audiences. Indeed, while the plentiful supply of complimentary chocolate bars from sponsors E. Wedel certainly helped sustain energy levels during the nine hectic days of events, the reflexive stylistic juxtapositions created this Autumn's true momentum.

Although Sofia Gubaidulina has been an avowedly religious composer throughout almost all her long career, her Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ according to St John, which received its UK première at the Proms on …August, is distinguished among her recent works in that it is not simply a work with a religious inspiration but an act of worship (despite the Russian Orthodox church's ban on instruments in its services).

I am no believer in historical determinism, nor am I a Scottish (or any other kind of) nationalist, but the fact that The Sixteen should commission James MacMillan to set anew the text used by Robert Carver in his 19-part motet O bone Jesu brings a profound satisfaction. No one else could have tidied up five-centuries-old loose ends as he. Carver (c. 1487–1566) was part of the dizzyingly rich flourishing of Scottish culture in the early years of the 16th century – a Catholic culture, doused by the dour sincerity of the Reformation (the MacTaliban, if you wish). MacMillan, a dry-eyed member of Scotland's Catholic minority, is the first composer since those days whose combination of faith and accomplishment allows him to pick up the glove torn from Carver's hand. His O bone Jesu – given its first public airing by The Sixteen under their founder-conductor Harry Chistophers at Southwark Cathedral on 10 October, at the outset of a year-long tour that takes them round the British Isles and to North America – may not quite reach Carver's Olympian heights (no other Scottish composer has achieved commensurate greatness) but it exploits a striking range of emotional reference nonetheless.

Nestling on the Kent coast between Ramsgate and Dover, the historic town of Deal is the distinctly pleasant home of a Summer Music Festival which in its 21 seasons has come to incorporate a fair amount of important contemporary music alongside more traditional offerings. This year's programme featured a welcome performance of the Seventh Piano Sonata (1956) by Harold Truscott (1914–92), marking the tenth anniversary of the death of this composer (resident in Deal from 1954); the world première of the choral work Town and Country (2002) by the Festival's new President, Kent-born Sir Richard Rodney Bennett (b.1936); and two compositions (and one arrangement) by David Matthews (b.1943), part-time Deal resident and the Festival's Artistic Director since 1989.

Oliver Knussen's Symphony in One Movement is his latest symphony. It is also his earliest – originally composed as the Concerto for Orchestra in 1969, and premièred by the 17-year old Knussen and the London Symphony Orchestra, with André Previn playing the flamboyant piano part. 33 years later, the piece has finally reached its definitive form, and Knussen conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra in its world première as part of an all-Knussen programme in celebration of his 50th birthday, at the Barbican Hall on 1 November.