The full story of 20th-century music has yet to be told disinterestedly. Every writer — composer, commentator, historian — has an axe to grind, often unwitting. Time does its work of pure ablution; the merely worthless slowly sinks beneath the horizon. But what then happens, it seems, is that we're left only with the huge grim important Easter Island figures of the great pioneers. Such Academy- or ‘History’-hallowed idolatry, tremendously impressive, is difficult to resist, and tends to demote any music that doesn't accord to the accompanying ideology, denaturing a richer understanding of the whole. Art isn't so clear-cut. Any attempts to make it so are simply not true. The true story of what is distinctive, valuable, permanent, in the last romantics, the moderns, the neo-classicists, serialists, constructivists, folklorists, neo-romantics, minimalists, neo-tonalists, neo-moderns, post-moderns of the past 100 years or so — the huge span remains discrete because we're still so hugely involved in every phase of it; it's still being digested — will need vast efforts of listening and assimilation, evaluation and revaluation, to amount eventually by thousands of individual small siftings and shiftings to a complete re-alignment of the field. Probably the main patterns as currently received are not all that far out: certainly we will be able to agree upon some seminal masterpieces without risking the dogmatic claustrophobia of Boulez's recent concert-programming. But what must yield is the very idea of main lines only, and only the main lines permitted, admirable, right — so deceptively definite, so crudely black/white, so cruelly denuded of detail.

A time there was when it was de rigueur for the self-respecting English composer to sample the life and art of our Germanic neighbours. A little time in the Land der Musik, it seemed, might help them make their own a little less ohne. Elgar supped at the springs in the Bavarian Highlands; Sullivan, Stanford and others in the Leipzig low-lands. It remains perplexing to the German mind that a reference to the ‘Frankfurt School’ in conversation with an Englishman can elicit praise for Percy Grainger, Roger Quilter and Co., but not a word about Adorno. Even Britten would have studied with Alban Berg, had the RCM not declared him ‘immoral’, thus forcing Ben to seek out immorality closer to home. To be sure, the rise of National Socialism reversed the tide for a while (the present writer is typical of his generation in that he owes the quality of his musical education to German-Jewish émigrés). But Gemiania proves today as seductive as ever to the English. Thanks to better pay and employment prospects, our finest graduates are regularly lured across the water to join their countrymen in maintaining the high standards of provincial German opera houses and orchestras. Our composers might on the whole be not as popular; but mentioning the name of Brian Ferneyhough still elicits the same mixture of awe, reverence and enthusiasm in German conservatories and radio studios as would a reference to the Pope in Cracow or to David Beckham at Old Trafford.

The composer Vladimir Vogel was born in Moscow in 1896. His mother was Russian, his father a businessman who came from Dresden. After the end of the First World War Vogel went to Berlin where he was admitted to Ferruccio Busoni's masterclass, along with Kurt Weill. His studies completed, his career was at first extremely promising, but it came to an abrupt halt with the relinquishing of power to the National Socialists. In jeopardy on three counts, as a Communist, a Jew and a so-called Neutöner or ‘new-note composer’, Vogel roamed Europe for a number of years. Finally he found a refuge in Switzerland, where he produced new compositions until the end of his life without managing to emulate his own early success. He died in Zurich in 1984.

The student of Swiss music history cannot but notice certain parallels in the lives of that country's finest composers – parallels that seem, at first glance, to explain why the student of Swiss music history is such a rare creature. Theodor Fröhlich (1803–1836) left Switzerland to study with Zelter in Berlin. Instead of staying to seek fame and fortune in the Prussian metropolis thereafter, he returned to his native Aarau, where he was forced to earn his keep by conducting assorted amateur choirs and ensembles. Johann Carl Eschmann (1826–1882) studied with Mendelssohn in Leipzig, began a promising career by experimenting with modernistic cyclic structures, but then relegated himself to conducting amateur choirs in darkest Canton Schaffhausen. Othmar Schoeck (1886–1957) studied in Leipzig with Reger, but he too soon returned home to tread in his forebears' footsteps. Numerous others followed the same path. It is as if the culprit were a common genetic trait, some strand of DNA that led generations of Swiss composers briefly to the Teutonic north before compelling them to plunge back into Helvetic obscurity. Or perhaps the yearning to hear cowbells tinkle and see the twinkle of brightly polished doorknobs on distant Alpine chalets is so overwhelming as to propel homewards any Swiss musician sojourning abroad for more than a few months. The cynic may scoff; but the present writer, in voluntary exile from his erstwhile Helvetic homeland, can vouch for the attraction of both.

In my experience, Swiss nationals who have heard of Hans Schaeuble are limited to certain musicologists and elderly contemporaries of the circa-war Swiss musical scene. Yet, in his prime, Schaeuble was perhaps the most internationally renowned of several promising young Swiss composers. He had a publication contract with Bote und Bock, and his Symphonische Musik für grosses Orchester (1937) was premièred by the Berlin Philharmonic under Carl Schuricht in 1939. Schaeuble's degree of acclaim in 1930s Germany and his subsequent relative obscurity in Switzerland share, in part, a common cause: the student Schaeuble moved away from his native Switzerland as soon as he was able, and in 1931, chose to launch his career in Berlin.

By any standard, Martin Derungs must be one of the most versatile composers in Switzerland, not only for the wide range of his compositions but for his ability to pursue parallel careers as a respected Early Music performer and as an activist and administrator in the politics of Swiss music.

• Aldeburgh Festival: Goehr's ‘Kantan and Damask Drum’ Malcolm Miller

• Spitalfields Festival: Anthony Gilbert's ‘Unrise’ Richard Leigh-Harris

• Földvár Music Days: Hommage a Kurtág Rie Yamamoto

• St. Albans Cathedral: Malcolm Singer's ‘The Mask of Esther’ Jill Barlow

• Goldsmith's College: Ferneyhough premiere Malcolm Miller

• Kaustinen: Shostakovich's ‘Suite on Finnish Themes’ Martin Anderson

• New York: Stephen Paulus's ‘Voices of Light’ Bret Johnson

• Tallinn: First International Eduard Tubin Festival Martin Anderson

• ‘Schweizer Töne’; ‘Entre Denges et Denezy’ Peter Palmer

• ‘Reviving the Muse’ Mark Doran

• 20th-century Swiss releases Peter Palmer

• Vaughan Williams's London Symphonythe original version Richard Tiedman

• Cardew's Treatise Philip Thomas

• Oliver Knussen's Sendak Operas Malcolm Galloway

• Schoenberg on Naxos Mark Doran

• Otte & Cage Mark Taylor

• Petyrek Piano Music Calum MacDonald

• Composers; Books received