This article focuses on the six pieces for orchestra, the earliest from 1998 and the most recent from 2011, by the American composer and filmmaker Phill Niblock (b.1933). These works stand apart from Niblock's more usual practice: that of making compositions on tape (later on computer) by superimposing layers of recordings of held tones played by individual instruments, the tones pitch-shifted to make dense, microtonal drone textures. Yet there are many similarities, in intent if not in sounding result. The article examines the manner of construction of the orchestral works, with emphasis on their pitch structure, and describes the performance practice that has grown around them in recent years. It describes Niblock's particular use of microtonal intervals (approximated in his notation in increments of a sixteenth of a tone) in generating both the textures and the overall form of his compositions, as well as the intended spatial distribution of the musicians in several of the pieces.

Large-scale polyrhythms appear in almost every composition Elliott Carter wrote during the 1980s. The roots of this technique can be found in earlier compositions where Carter deliberately combined different simultaneous speeds not only at the musical surface, but also at a deeper, structural level. In A Mirror on which to dwell (1975), he already uses this compositional tool as a form-generating feature. Through the analysis of three songs from this cycle (Anaphora, Insomnia and O Breath), it is shown how the appearance of structural polyrhythms at the musical surface is meticulously organized through pitch organization, instrumentation and the relation with text. The double function of the polyrhythm – as a surface phenomenon and a background structure – is essential for the understanding of this composition. It also shows the difference with Carter's later use of the same technique in the 1980s, where large-scale or structural polyrhythms are more of a constructional nature and remain invisible in the musical score.

This article presents a view of the first meetings between the oboe virtuoso Christopher Redgate and the composers Dorothy Ker and Fabrice Fitch. The article details some aspects of these meetings to highlight the processes that are at play in the earliest stages of collaboration. These processes are both practical (in which information about how the oboe works is uncovered and shared) and philosophical (in which the oboe itself becomes a significant source of new possibilities). The article traces a period during which Redgate was developing a new oboe, working with composers to create new repertoire for the new instrument. Arguing for closer attention to the ‘everyday’ aspects of composers and performers working together, the article explores some of the ways in which Redgate pulls apart his experience of performing to develop new technique and to opening up new possibilities for future composition. I also argue that the oboe, as much as the composer and performer, plays a part in shaping musical outcomes.

The aim of this paper is to re-describe Brian Ferneyhough's compositional practice as an arrangement of medium/form relations in the sense of system theorist Niklas Luhmann. The production process of an artwork is understood as a procedure by which ‘a form is changed for another’, or rather: by which a form becomes a medium for further form distinctions, such that the contingency of the beginning is transformed into the necessity of the final work of art. Based on the preliminary ‘large-scale form’, the fundamental steps in the composition of the first movement of the Fourth String Quartet are observed as recursive operations in a self-referentially closed process of gaining form. Despite its formal closure, the final score's potentiality becomes a medium for further performative and perceptive actualizations. The artwork establishes itself on the level of second order observations, as a difference between the possible and the actual: between medium and form.

Any would-be conductor of The Planets needs first to consult Holst's own recordings of 1923 and 1926; then Imogen Holst's The Music of Gustav Holst (3rd edition, in particular Chapter XXVI), and her and Colin Matthews's contributions to the Collected Facsimile Edition, Volume III. Opinions vary as to how far the constraints of the early recording studio affected the composer's interpretation, so the recent discovery of a miniature score with Sir Henry Wood's annotations on the 1931 Prom performance, where Holst had no such inhibitions, is of unusual interest. Its positive attributes, side by side with Wood's merciless exposing of the difficulties encountered by the composer, are all there. Durations of three movements have been added in Holst's writing, and Wood's own timings shed further light although, sadly, muddied by errors and inconsistencies. But there is new food for thought regarding such aspects as the speed of Saturn and a reminder where the central melody of Jupiter is concerned.

• London, Barbican: Alexander Goehr's ‘When Adam Fell’ Paul Conway

• London, Barbican: Thomas Adès's ‘Polaris’ Robert Stein

• University of Manchester: Philip Grange's ‘Ghosts of Great Violence’ Paul Conway

• Manchester University – Psappha 20th anniversary concert Tim Mottershead

• Birmingham, Symphony Hall: Cecilia McDowall's ‘Seventy Degrees Below Zero’ Paul Conway

• London, ENO: John Adams's ‘The Death of Klinghoffer’ Robert Stein

• London, Barbican: Rebecca Saunders's ‘Still’ Paul Conway

• Chichester University: ‘New Music Chi’ John Wheatley

• St Mary's Church, Shrewsbury: John Joubert's Cello Concerto Paul Conway

• London, St. Giles Cripplegate: Jericho House's ‘The Tempest’ Jill Barlow

• John Ireland Symposium Mike Smith

• Ligeti's Laments Mike Searby

• Michel van der Aa Arnold Whittall

• Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf Colin Clarke

• Brian Elias Paul Conway

• John Foulds and Lionel Sainsbury Raymond Head

• The other ‘Wozzeck’ Peter Palmer

• Kurt Schwertsik Howard Skempton

• Further Reviews Colin Clarke, Bret Johnson, Peter Palmer, Raymond Head, Paul Conway, Peter Reynolds