Laurence Crane's music is often described as experimental or considered as a continuation of the English experimental tradition. In this first extended examination of Crane's music it is proposed that, instead of relying upon associations and aesthetic alignments, the music might be considered as experimental through a particularly experimental approach to performance. After a brief overview of Crane's output his position as a composer is considered within the context of the experimental music tradition. This tradition is then considered in relation to performance practice, both historical and contemporary. A selection of Crane's music is examined in the light of that practice, whilst aspects of the composer's approaches to tonality, instrumentation, form and notation are also highlighted.

After nearly 40 years of creating recorded electronic music, for the last 10 years Éliane Radigue has created music exclusively in collaboration with performers, using solely oral and aural transmission. Focusing on the details of this ‘scoreless’ working method, this article considers the performer's perspective on Radigue's Occam Ocean (2011–), a series of 22 infinitely combinable solos and over 20 chamber pieces. Through interviews with the performers and Radigue, a composite understanding of their collaboration is reached, focusing on the emergent ideas of virtuosity, memory, images, scores, hospitality and non-hierarchy. A typical transmission and collaboration is described, and a new lens for viewing this method is proposed, the living score. The article concludes with a brief discussion of how Radigue and her collaborators' non-hierarchical model of collaboration may offer an alternative compositional framework.

This article addresses the phenomenon of New Conceptualism, otherwise known as conceptual music, or Konzeptmusik, and locates it within the German new music scene of the last decade. It is suggested that conceptual music may perhaps be a contradiction in terms, representing a nostalgic desire for the semantic strength of conceptual art. In particular the article focuses on Johannes Kreidler's 2009 work, Fremdarbeit, and scrutinises the composer's claim to have ‘outsourced’ the composition of the work to India and China. The significance of this – whether actual or fictional – as an example of globalisation is examined and set within its political and economic context.

John Croft's ‘Composition is Not Research’ (TEMPO Vol. 69, No. 272 (2015), pp. 6–11) argues that, ‘the very idea that musical composition is a form of research is a category error’ (p. 6). My response argues that Croft's analysis is borne of a widespread, misguided and essentialist attempt to reduce all research to the paradigm of scientific method, and that he accepts this paradigm uncritically. Whilst asserting that ‘composition is research’ does not entail a category mistake (as the whole point about research is that it is not delimited in any way), assuming that all research must be reducible to the scientific paradigm of method does entail the requisite reification to constitute such a mistake. The imposition of this reductionist paradigm has a distorting impact on the Humanities more generally and, whilst these distortions are particularly acute with musical composition, that is no reason to single it out for persecution. I argue that where the tenets of scientific method are adopted outside of science, this constitutes, more often than not, superficial pseudo-science (or scientism), whereby the tenets of scientific method are fetishized and applied divorced from the complete scientific method and scientific objectives. I conclude that the Humanities would do better to develop its own paradigms – paradigms that are better suited and intrinsic to its respective disciplines.

John Croft's article ‘Composition is not Research’ challenges a conception and ideal of compositional work in academia which has grown in prominence over several decades in the UK. As a performer-scholar, who also writes non-performance-related scholarship, I welcome this challenge, share some of Croft's reservations about the ways in which these conceptions often manifest themselves, and also have concerns about the rushed integration of practitioners into academia and the implications for more traditional forms of scholarship. However, I find many of Croft's formulations and assumptions too narrow, and instead argue that a good deal of the process of composition and performance does constitute research – grappling with difficult questions, exploring solutions, and producing creative work which embodies these solutions and from which others can draw much of value.

This reply addresses a number of misunderstandings that have arisen with regard to my argument in ‘Composition is not Research’; notably that it rests on a definition of research derived from ‘scientific method’, and that it somehow entails the view that composers should not be asked to write about their music. It is argued here that referring to composition as ‘research’ is at best a perverse (if institutionally expedient) way of talking about what composers have always done, and at worst leads to a distorted picture of compositional work and musical value.

Christopher Fox:Apartment House has a reputation as the principal UK ensemble for experimental music, in all its different forms. When you began the ensemble, did you have a clear idea about what musical direction you were going to take, or has it changed over time?

Sibelius' and Nielsen's 150th anniversary year has prompted a proliferation of events to celebrate the music of the Nordic composers, from conferences to concert series. The Proms has been no exception, with an unusually high number of Nordic composers represented throughout the festival (although Glazunov, also in his 150th anniversary year, has been forgotten). British composer Gary Carpenter's Dadaville was premiered on the first night, which opened to the sounds of Nielsen's Maskarade and Sibelius's Belshazzar's Feast, while later concerts covered here presented premieres by the Swedish composers Anders Hillborg and B Tommy Andersson, the Norwegian composer Ørjan Matre, and Moscow-born (though UK-based) composer Alissa Firsova.

‘Love poems are the best things to make song cycles out of’, Hugh Wood claimed in a pre-Prom interview. Wood's affection for English poetry dates back a long way: Scenes from Comus, his Milton setting premiered at the Proms in 1965 set his career going.

It's hardly easy to integrate new music into the Proms, a classical music festival that is unique, in this country at least, in the way it manages to harness popular appeal. And it's probably all but inevitable that many of the festival's commissions end up being expressly ‘inspired by’ or written ‘as a complement to’ the mainstream big-hitters alongside which they appear. Given the inevitable presence on the bill of Mahler, say (or Sibelius this anniversary year), it makes a certain amount of sense that the new piece – yet to be written when its slot is assigned, after all – might aim to relate in some tangible way to the rest of the programme.

‘The desire to create’, wrote Copland, ‘is the basic need to make evident one's deepest feelings about life’. This aspiration to use art for self-expression, or even self-discovery, is universal amongst composers, but is always accompanied by the danger that the subject matter ends up too close to the composer's psyche, leading to a self-indulgence in the music.

John Luther Adams holds a unique position in American contemporary music. His works are as tinged with minimalist virtues as they are rigorously experimental, offering sound worlds that seem at once unearthly and welcoming, unconventional yet accessible. At the core of the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer's work lies a major concern with translating the tenuous and illusory concept of acoustic and natural sonic space into densely textured instrumental works. Exploring the composer's oeuvre, one senses a deep fascination with acoustic phenomena; in works such as the orchestral soundscape Becoming Ocean (2012), and the percussion pieces Inuksuit (2009) and Strange and Sacred Noise (1997), the composer eschews any audible rhythmic and melodic complexities in favour of serene yet coursing sound masses and highly sonorous ensemble textures.

They say London is dying (again): this time smothered by affluence, its youth fleeing for affordable refuge in the provinces, its culture concreted over by the corporate Cyclops. As far as new music goes, these are tough times in the capital, for sure (where are they not?), but the established ensembles and organisations cling on like the tenacious buddleias on the walls fringing suburban train lines, and here and there new cracks appear in the pavement, energetic wildflowers springing up through them to take their chance in the light.

When greeted by a deconstructed, open set of brutal bleakness (designed by Jamie Vartan), haunted by the waste of the night before – a pink high-heeled shoe, empty coat hangers and discarded plastic cups – one is made immediately aware of the potency of Enda Walsh's theatrical aesthetic. There is a lone orange balloon offering a tragic echo of a party. Underscored with silence, The Hotel Servant (played by Walsh's long-term collaborator Mikel Murfi) enters and cleans the blood from the stained hotel room floor, and does so with a charisma equal to that of Michael Gambon in the opening scene of Krapp's Last Tape.

The ‘Soundscapes’ exhibition comprised six paintings displayed individually in darkened rooms, each ‘accompanied’ by a specially composed piece played over loudspeakers. The seven artists (two working as a duo) invited to create musical responses represented a cross-section of disciplines, from wildlife recording, sound installation, film composition, DJing and instrumental composition, and, it must be said, all had some crowd-pulling potential. Given the reviews, one might have expected to discover unspeakable things happening in the depths of the National Gallery; however, I found it to be an interesting and well-executed exhibition which presented some thoughtful sonic responses to great paintings.

Each September, contemporary music enthusiasts, composers, scholars and performers from around Australia migrate toward the Victorian regional city of Bendigo for BIFEM, a remarkable music festival now in its third year. The festival has established itself as an annual event of unparalleled significance in Australia – not only as a forum for the presentation of exciting and little-heard music, but as a gathering of like-minded peers. A high proportion of the audience consists of musicians and composers, so informal conversations between concerts are almost as stimulating as the programmed forums and workshops that take place during the festival. In 2015, over the weekend 4–6 September, almost every work in the programme was an Australian premiere, which gives some further evidence of the importance of the festival to the nation's cultural ecology.

The sheer diversity of Ultima events goes a great way towards explaining Oslo's creative impetus and influence within Northern Europe: the sense of play is tangible in deft, brave and astute programming. With the extension of Lars Petter Hagen's Ultima Festival directorship, taking a risk is still promoted, and very necessary in cultivating the talent and ideas we now expect from and associate with the music scene of Oslo. Ultima 2015, which I attended from 12 to 16 September, did not fail to deliver, provoking and poking at every twist and turn.

The ninetieth birthday of the last surviving founding father of post-WWII classical music is certainly reason enough for celebration, but what could the Lucerne Festival offer that has not already been covered by the many festivities that have taken place around the world? Fortunately, the festival has a trump card up its sleeve: the Lucerne Festival Academy, founded 11 years ago by Pierre Boulez and festival director Michael Haefliger to provide young musicians with the opportunity for intensive study of the music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra and Ensemble were omnipresent during 11 concerts given over nine hours on 23 August 2015, performing eight world premieres from three generations of composers inspired by Boulez, alongside eight works from the master himself.