For contemporary music in America and Europe, the 1970s were a time in which the old order was changing, giving place to a new avant-garde. In Germany, the Darmstädter Ferienkurse für Neue Musik was stagnating under the inept leadership of Ernst Thomas, savaged by the press and ridden with inner squabbling and politics. For 25 years a bastion of musical innovation and experimentation, Darmstadt now seemed little more than ‘the crumbling edifice of the avant-garde's chief fortress’. The focus was shifting to Paris, where, in 1977, IRCAM opened beneath the Centre Georges Pompidou. Led by Pierre Boulez and staffed by Luciano Berio, Vinko Globokar, Max Mathews, and Jean-Claude Risset, its stated mission was to reunite science and music and create new modes of performance. Across the Channel, the composers of the New Complexity (Brian Ferneyhough, James Dillon, Richard Barrett, and Chris Dench) were also redefining performance practice, focusing not on technology but on notation and its implications for virtuosity. And in America, different schools of musical thought were colliding in the streets and the academy. Leonard Bernstein delivered the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard, then presented his ‘unanswered question’ to the American public, on television, in 1976. And uptown and downtown were ensconced, with Milton Babbitt and Morton Feldman appointed to the faculties at the Juilliard School and the State University of New York at Buffalo, respectively. On both sides of the Atlantic, seminal artistic statements were being made, heralding the unruly adolescence of a new and disparate avant-garde no longer directly connected to the Second World War.

The composer Robert Simpson was a pupil of Herbert Howells, studying with him for the D.Mus which he took at Durham University in 1951. This was the time of the St Pauls' Service, when Howells was nearly 60 and Simpson just 30. Simpson took no composition lessons with Howells, but had tuition from him in counterpoint. Simpson told me that one day he had written a fugue on a subject of his own devising, and he took it along to Howells with not a little pride in his achievement. Howells looked at the fugue, said nothing, and then took out a fountain pen and, as Simpson put it

wrote a complete fugue there and then, in his beautifully fastidious hand, as fluently and easily as if he was writing a letter, exploring all the intervals and implications of my subject in a way that I had not thought possible.

It was at an interview towards the end of my research project in January 2005 that Henri Dutilleux, one of the most unique composers of the 20th and 21st centuries, granted me an exclusive opportunity to discuss aspects of his musical training. In the interview he reflects on his studies in the provinces and at the Paris Conservatoire:

I did not study piano at the Conservatoire, nor did I study organ. I received my technique in the provinces. The Director of Douai tutored me well, which is why I was at a very good level when I entered the Conservatoire [Paris]. With my solid training, I was encouraged to enter the Prix de Rome very soon, which is why I did not study there long enough.

• Boston: Elliott Carter's Horn Concerto Rodney Lister

• London, Barbican: Sophia Gubaidulina's second violin concerto In tempus praesansJohn Wheatley

• London, St Giles, Cripplegate: Pavel Novák David Matthews

• London, Queen Elizabeth Hall: Simon Holt's ‘Sueňos’ John Wheatley

• London, Warehouse: Sarah Nicolls and ‘Hyper Piano’ Jill Barlow

• London, Wigmore Hall: Alexander Goehr 75th Birthday Concert Malcolm Miller

• London, Barbican: Colin Matthews's ‘Reflected Images’ John Wheatley

• London, Royal Festival Hall: Korngold's ‘Das Wunder der Heliane’ Martin Anderson

• London, Spitalfields Festival: Barley, Metcalfe and Barrett Jill Barlow

• London, Sadler's Wells: A Maconchy Operatic double-bill Guy Rickards

• London, Globe Theatre 2007 Season: ‘Renaissance and Revolution’ Jill Barlow

• Reports from California Jeff Dunn, Malcolm Miller

• Malcolm Williamson's Mischievous Muse Paul Conway

• Alex Ross's ‘The Rest is Noise’ Rodney Lister

• NEOS: the first releases Evan Johnson

• Baltic composers from Toccata Classics Peter Reynolds

• Poul Ruders Bernard Hughes

• John Foulds's ‘World Requiem’ Guy Rickards

• British symphonies on Lyrita Paul Conway

• Malipiero's Piano Concertos Bret Johnson

• Ferneyhough and MacMillan choral music Peter Palmer

• Brett Dean and Judith Weir Bernard Hughes

• Glanert and ShostakovichGuy Rickards

• Dutilleux piano music Janet Obi-Keller

• Further reviews Calum MacDonald, Peter Palmer, Bret Johnson