This article explores some of the diverse forms that musical notation has assumed in the early twenty-first century and discusses its use along a broad spectrum of creative intention, which includes visual representation of sounds, verbal lists of instructions or provocations, and much else. Drawing upon his own experience as a composer, and on studies of the work of composers both older and younger (Stockhausen, Lucier, Wolff; Molitor, Lely), the author examines the changing meanings of notes, staves and clefs, and the possibilities of graphic scores, text scores, and hybrid forms of notation.

This article is a reflection on aspects of the compositional practice and aesthetics of the American composer Morton Feldman (1926–1987) as viewed from the perspective of a fellow composer. Writing as a colleague immersed in Feldman's work for more than three decades, Kevin Volans discusses Feldman's concepts of time and form; his approach to touch on the piano, and to instrumentation and tone colour generally; his relationship with the visual arts; his notational practices with regard to pitch and rhythm; his anti-conceptualist standpoint, and much else.

This article discusses the concept, working practices and outcomes of the Concrescence Project, a research project initiated by the author oriented towards innovations in vocal practice and composition through experiments with combining vocal techniques from different cultures. The concept of ethnomodernism is explored, as are different attitudes to vocal sound production in a variety of musical traditions including the avant-garde, traditional styles from the Nordic/Baltic region, and overtone singing. The article concludes with a discussion of microtonal tunings, their notation, and their implementation in vocal composition.

Robert Ashley's opera Perfect Lives was conceived for the medium of television and first broadcast (by the UK's Channel 4) in 1984. Partly for this reason, and also for other factors (the apparently necessary involvement of Ashley himself as narrator; the absence of a complete, fully notated score) the work has received very few live performances. In 2011 the New York City-based performance collective Varispeed reconceived the work as a day-long, site-specific event, following Ashley's available notations and recorded performances in broad outline but departing from them in creative ways. In this article Varispeed founding member Gelsey Bell describes the working processes and decision-making that informed the collective's approach to this experimental classic.

French-Canadian composer Claude Vivier (1948–1983) is one of the few composers, perhaps the only one, to use an invented language throughout his entire compositional career. Vivier's use of what he called his langue inventée (‘invented language’) spanned the first vocal work in his catalogue – Ojikawa (1968) – to his final work, Glaubst du an die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (1983), completed only shortly before his murder in March 1983. Despite the pervasiveness of this technique – in fact, it is the only technique that remains a constant across all of Vivier's stylistic periods – relatively little attention has been given to the langue inventée in scholarship. This article presents a description of Vivier's langue inventée in three parts, beginning with a general introduction. The second part presents the langue inventée as a product of automatic writing and engages directly with Vivier's sketches to propose a method that Vivier likely used to write much of his langue inventée text. The final section of the article presents Vivier's langue inventée as a form of grammelot – a term revived by playwright, actor and director Dario Fo (1926–), which is associated with the dialect theatre of the Commedia dell'arte tradition. This article aims to demonstrate that Vivier's langue inventée is not a just a string of unintelligible nonsense syllables, but rather a very purposeful grammelot, freely composed in a two-stage approach to automatic writing, that reaches beyond linguistic semantics.

This article is an interview with the Franco-Slovenian composer, conductor and trombonist Vinko Globokar, translated, edited and introduced by the author. It offers an overview of Globokar's musical development and a consideration of his artistic position, which straddles the worlds of composition and improvisation. Globokar's music combines complex organisation with an interest in non-hierarchical and improvisatory elements. He has always refused to pit the avant-garde claims of contemporary music against those of free jazz, his music embracing aspects of both, as well as of traditional Balkan musics. His genre-defying approach remains better known in continental Europe than in the UK or North America, and the present text is a contribution to the limited bibliography on Globokar in English.

This article argues that Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern demonstrates a unique approach to music-drama that stems from the perceptual capacities of listeners, and their desire to search for meaning in what they hear. Beginning with the claim that Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern can be viewed as the culmination of an aesthetic project begun at the point of Lachenmann's emergence as a distinctive voice of the European avant-garde during the 1960s, the article first examines two major aspects of Lachenmann's aesthetics – musique concrète instrumentale and aura – outlining a composing philosophy that has been at the heart of Lachenmann's practice throughout his career. The article claims that Lachenmann sought to establish a rejuvenated semiotics, freed from cultural baggage and tied to the perceptual and cognitive capacities of listeners. Drawing upon the studies of Naomi Cumming and Luke Windsor, it outlines a theoretical framework that takes into account this composing philosophy and its implications, applying it in analyses of various excerpts from Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern. My analysis illuminates a music-drama that forms around the interplay of internally represented images and sensations, the emergence of which is facilitated by a musical language that prepares sounds to take on certain types of meaning. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the possible implications this has for audience members.

Composer and sonic artist Joanna Bailie has described her creative journey to date as a series of ‘not entirely reconcilable’ stages. This article introduces her work through a broadly chronological survey, tracing her career and offering a detailed consideration of her recent and current musico-aesthetic concerns. It will become evident that paradox and the juxtaposition of ‘not entirely reconcilable’ elements are, as it happens, key positive components of Bailie's art on many levels. Moreover, it will be seen that her work posits a conscious and highly personal response to certain perceived crises regarding ‘contemporary classical music’, a term which Bailie herself detests. Particular reference is made to Bailie's ongoing series of concert pieces combining acoustic instruments with field recordings, Artificial Environments, and a series of site-specific audio-visual installations, the place that you can see and hear.

Horatiu Radulescu's Fifth String Quartet, ‘before the universe was born’, is a shining example of his radical compositional approach. With an intense interest in creating a rich, numinous sound-world constructed firmly on principles of nature, science and ancient philosophy, Radulescu developed a unique compositional language that breaks with traditional musical conventions. In hopes of illuminating the inner workings behind his often enigmatic compositional process, this article examines various aspects relating to Radulescu's Fifth Quartet: the work's formal construction, with a focus on its notation and overall large-scale harmonic development; the Quartet's rhythmic devices and their link to the philosophical underpinnings that drive the work; the extended instrumental string techniques employed throughout, the sounds they achieve, and how they are executed; and the work's spectral pitch organisation.

This paper explores the use of heterophonic tunings, the gradual substitution of pitches from one harmonic series to another resulting in the simultaneous sounding of different and sometimes contrasting intonations, in the music of the American composer Larry Polansky. The discussion is contextualised by an exploration of the innovations in tuning practice in the work of an earlier generation of American composers. The ramifications of Polansky's compositional ideas in terms of notation and performability are examined with reference to several key works, notably for jim, ben and lou; freeHorn; and ii-v-i.

This article is the first extended analytical study of the music of the Irish composer Andrew Hamilton. It explores the aesthetic ideas that inform Hamilton's music, which often have as much in common with the work of contemporary visual artists and writers as they do with that of other composers. It discusses the particular sense of humour underlying many of his pieces, as well as his music's use of common and supposedly simple materials, which are put in the service of new and original aims.

Ligeti has largely been understood as an opponent of serialism, though he was deeply entangled with the mid-century Darmstadt avant-garde in the late 1950s and 1960s. As such, appearances of twelve-tone techniques in his works are typically dismissed as borrowed, superficial or juvenile. This article synthesises previous research, original analysis and sketch materials to reassess Ligeti's engagement with dodecaphonic techniques. The Kyrie movement is steeped in Webernian dodecaphony, from the foundational plan to the surface expression of the vocal melodies. Ligeti's use of palindromes also harkens to Bartók's music. In this sense, the Kyrie movement of the Requiem can be understood as a eulogy for both Webern and Bartók, as well as for the dodecaphonic techniques that intrigued Ligeti even as his compositional technique moved far beyond them.

Piers Hellawell is Professor of Composition at Queen's University, Belfast and one of the United Kingdom's most interesting and thoughtful composers. In this interview he speaks about his compositional interests and preoccupations through a discussion of his works and technical features such as his ‘escalator series’. He also speaks about his concerns for composition as a discipline in universities and schools.

This article explores recent, radical developments in the ways in which new music is programmed and presented. It is contextualised by a brief survey of new music programming across the history of public concert-giving, and by several new interviews with industry professionals in the UK. These illustrate various rationales behind current practice including the dissatisfaction with traditional modes of concert-giving where appropriate. They also inform the author's conviction that different branches of new music benefit from different forms of presentation, acknowledging the importance of innovative forms to certain new styles.

Close examination of John Adams's oeuvre reveals that symmetry is one of the predominant features of his music. Three common types of symmetry are encountered in Adams's works: reflection, translation and rotation. This article investigates these symmetries and tracks their development throughout Adams's compositional career. An analysis of selected works from the 1970s (China Gates and Phrygian Gates), 1980s (Grand Pianola Music and Fearful Symmetries) and 1990s (the Violin Concerto and Century Rolls) highlights the most pervasive symmetry in each decade and shows a shift from preconceived overarching symmetries that frame entire musical structures to smaller-level symmetries that affect the music at a level of phrase and motivic structure.

Little can be said about music during the last century without encountering the men and women who supported it financially. Pierre Bourdieu's impression that the services rendered freely for the good of society reinforce a symbolic debt between giver and recipient complicates motivations behind patronage. Indeed, applying Bourdieu's theory to altruism in general – here, patronage in particular – highlights what could be thought of as a performance of futility: both giver and receiver understand the tenacious terms yet agree nonetheless to act out the process of reaching equilibrium. In the case of iconic music patron Betty Freeman (1921–2009), her support of the avant-garde seems, at times, to call into question on what side of this ‘performed futility’ she existed. This article considers ways in which Freeman's work as patron of the musical avant-garde allowed her to perform her identity as a woman and mother among a community on the fringe.