In her book The Philosophical Imaginary, Michèle Le Doeuff claims philosophers use imagery precisely where their argument is at its weakest in order to provide an indistinct rhetorical space which cannot be clearly judged or criticised. Using Le Doeuff's framework, I examine programme notes: descriptive writing from programmes and grant applications that often tie the music to an extra-musical source of meaning. I point out instances where what is at stake in the work shifts from place to place, performing a determined meaning for the genre's outsiders, but indicating semantic superfluity to insiders who will tangibly judge the music on search committees and grant panels. After discussing genre theory and the history of new music, I argue that this imagery has a deeper social function: to gain social capital by performing diversity while maintaining the cultural power afforded by the genre's roots in hegemonic formalism.

The aesthetic of fault, failure, breaking off or breaking down is a diverse phenomenon pervading a multitude of areas in daily life, art in general, and medial contemporary music in particular. In addition to its destructive element, an error always allows the opportunity to look behind the façade and to comprehend mechanisms in systems. As soon as a function is impaired or defective we learn more about the operations of that system – be it biology, psychology, informatics or any other branch of science – and this holds especially true for medially conveyed, digital content. In a reality increasingly capitalising on digitally transported content this viewpoint gains growing social as well as artistic poignancy. This article explores the conception and connotation of error in general and, specifically, in the field of digital media before discuss resulting implications for the arts and giving examples of how to harness their attributes. Finally, it also reflects on the author's motivation in approaching the principle of error, and reflects upon how this subject is substantially influencing my own current pieces.

This article serves as an introduction to the twentieth- and twenty-first-century musical practices that have made use of glass instruments and objects. Emphasis is placed on those practices that use glass in a raw, acoustic manner, and those that take advantage of the precision with which glass can be tuned. First, a general history of glass music is presented, followed by an overview of the physical and acoustic aspects pertaining to the material that are relevant to those composers wishing to integrate glass into their works. Finally, the composers, performers and instrument builders who have made significant use of glass in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries are surveyed.

This article examines the music of composer Helen Grime. It discusses her use of melodic and harmonic materials derived from a Bothy Ballad in Two Eardley Pictures. It analyzes the frequent use of interpenetration and stratification in her music, and the morphing of motivic material via a number of transformations in her Violin Concerto. Finally, the article discusses the narrative quality found in Grime's Piano Concerto.

The British composer Gwyn Pritchard turned 70 in 2018. The present article offers the first substantial overview of Pritchard's life and work from his earliest public compositions of the late 1960s to some of his most recent music. His early life, training and periods of self-study are covered, as well as his time as founder-director of the Uroboros Ensemble. The second half of the article offers some insights into Pritchard's methods – particularly his use of permutating six-number series to generate pitch material – revealed in conversation with the composer and supported by unpublished pre-compositional materials.

In parallel to London's overflowing cityscape, saturated on this occasion by both a bitterly cold torrential downpour and the annual frenzied crowding of materialistic festivity, the penultimate event to the city's Contemporary Music Festival was underway just after 7pm on Saturday 15 December 2018 in the cavernous Ambika P3 venue, a 14,000 square foot performing and exhibition space located on basement level to the University of Westminster's Marylebone Campus.

ECLAT, Stuttgart's ever-expanding midwinter Festival, has grown to be one of the most promising German happenings of the scene by focusing on fresh blood and gender parity. This year's specifically marketed ambition was to push the boundaries in terms of concert setting, audience participation and politics. While this attempt was more curious than successful, the festival generally managed to present interesting works while avoiding any cataclysmic failures – a feat of sorts for a festival presenting 37 premieres.

In a 2013 article Claire Chase muses on her dream to commission and premiere the ‘21st-century Density’. This performance demonstrated some of the difficulties with this idea in the actuality of twenty-first-century composition – the Work as it was perceived in the mid-twentieth century is largely displaced; the performer and her body has been rendered visible, her contribution central, and this concert is far more a portrait of Claire Chase than it is of her instrument. But Chase had in fact already accounted for this. ‘Of what will the Density of our time be made?’ she wrote, prophetically. ‘Of osmium? Of signal processing? Of wood? Of carbon? Of flesh? Of air?’