I have been asked on a number of occasions recently whether I felt a heavy weight of responsibility during my work on Elgar's Third Symphony, and if this was an inhibiting factor. The question put me in a rather awkward situation, since a truthful answer was going to show me in a very immodest light. The fact is, my work on the project seemed to lie outside any feelings of awe and moral responsibility – because, quite simply, I was in love with the music and laboured for the sheer joy of it, without thought of ethical issues.

Before the private première of Anthony Payne's ‘elaboration’ of the sketches for Elgar's Third Symphony last October there was a fair amount of opprobious wrangling about whether it should have been attempted at all. I had my arguments ready, but now that I've actually heard the Symphony there is clearly only one response to those who carp at it – why, in God's name, should the world be denied such a stirring, life-affirming experience? Three months after that private first performance in BBC Maida Vale Studio I am still certain that it was one of the great musical experiences of my life. To have been a small part of it (I interviewed Payne and conductor Andrew Davis before the performance) was, simply, a privilege.

Anyone bold enough to claim that the British compositional scene is dominated at present by a mainstream whose principal godfathers are Tippett and Birtwistle might just as well extend the reductive flourish by observing that an alternative duo – Britten and Maxwell Davies – not only have less in common with each other but are also less influential, less ‘significant’. Despite obvious differences of style, Tippett and Birtwistle share a basic predisposition to internationalism and modernism. By contrast, Britten's resistance to modernism and Davies's aspiration to classicism combine with a more direct response from both composers to local, if not exactly ‘national’ features, and, by the criteria for mainstream membership given above, this means that they belong on the margins of contemporary musical life in Britain, not at the centre.

By alternating his Nine Movements for String Quartet with his Nine Settings of Paul Celan (for soprano, two clarinets, viola, cello and double bass) to produce Pulse Shadows, Harrison Birtwistle created not only his longest work for the concert hall but also his most moving and affirmative.

The overriding picture that emerges from the scrutiny of the sketches for Peter Maxwell Davies's Third Symphony (1984) is the remarkable insight it affords in demonstrating a highly proficient composer in total control of his material. He is the consummate workman: diligent, methodical, economical. Indeed, his rather cerebral approach can be construed as objective – purely in the sense of the detached and calculating nature of the sketches, seemingly free as they are from spontaneous outpourings of instinctive musical inspiration. Nevertheless, Davies's method of composing endows the overall project with a sense of cogent direction and powerful meaning. Such discernment is not easily achieved, and has to be carefully planned early on in the work's genesis; certainly, the Third Symphony – a prodigious piece of architecture lasting almost one hour – is enriched by its preliminary working-out. Furthermore, Davies's employment of precompositional determinants, such as Magic Squares and pitch and durational matrices, is so integral to the overall construction of the piece that there exists a susbstantial volume of material, soley devoted to precompositional workings for the work.

• The Making of Peter Grimes David Farneth

• Gerald Finzi: an English Composer Mike Smith

• Ern Lendvai's Musical Symmetries Roy Howat

• Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture Michael Graubart

• Poles Apart: The Music of Roger Smalley Mike Seabrook

• Triduum: Macmillan's Easter triptych Ronald Weitzman

• Recent Maxwell Davies premires Paul Conway

• Jonathan Lloydand Beyond Malcolm Miller

• Havergal Brian's The Cenci John Pickard

• Nrgrd's Bach to the Future Edward Jessen

• Nordgren's Breakthrough in Munich Christoph Schlren

• Birtwistle's Mask of Orpheus Robert Adlington

• Tippett's The Rose Lake David Clarke

• Robert Simpson's last work Guy Rickards

• The Kurtgs play Jatekok Rachel Beckles Willson

• Christopher Rouse Bret Johnson

• Magnus Lindberg on Ondine Stephen Long

• Czeslaw Marek and Richard Flury Peter Palmer

• Brian Dennis on CD-ROM Calum MacDonald

• Ian Wilson's piano trios Raymond Head

• Havergal Brian piano music (and a book of essays) Martin Anderson