The notion of the Darmstadt School lies at the very heart of any conception of what the Darmstadt New Music courses were, how they functioned and what their purpose was. Arguably, the notion is important, too, in understanding what the Darmstadt New Music Courses still are, even now, a half-century on from the original coining of the term itself.

In his introduction to Gertrude Stein's Four In America, Thornton Wilder quotes Stein's answer to someone who had asked for an explanation of her well-known line ‘a rose is a rose is a rose’

EG: Analyzing Pli selon pli, I went to the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basle and studied your sketches. There were some astonishing findings. As an example, let us look at the vocal line in Improvisation I sur Mallarmé. I wanted to take a restricted material and investigate it, and I wanted to find out how this vocal line was generated. If we look at these music examples: First, here are the pitches of the vocal line, ‘Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hu,’, etc. [Example 1, my notation, EG.]

Sergei Prokofiev's association with modernism was a curious one: on the one hand, he thought his technically innovative, bold and challenging music positioned him as a modernist but on the other, he remained wary of aligning himself with any specific movement. Such a combination of reluctance and ambiguity in the face of a movement that was engaging interwar Europe with such intensity stems from what can be viewed as an overly protective attitude to his own purity of idiom. Prokofiev was keenly aware of his own prodigious talent and simultaneously anxious of possible musical influence. Nonetheless, he continued to be watchful of cutting-edge developments in music even if he was not particularly sympathetic to the accompanying philosophical debates on modern music.

The publication of three previously unpublished early organ works of Samuel Barber (1910–1981) in the hundredth year since his birth allows an opportunity to consider his output afresh for an instrument he knew well from his childhood years. Known to millions through the broadcast, concert and film media, Barber's most-played work, the Adagio from the String Quartet, op. 11 (1936) has remained a familiar voice to contemporary ears 75 years after its composition. Indeed it could be fairly suggested that it has become to America what Elgar's Nimrod has to the British; a piece that can summon up the rawest of emotions within its first bars whilst being imbued with an unquestionable national identity.

• London, Royal Opera House: ‘Promised End’ Tim Mottershead

• Amsterdam: Raskatov's ‘A Dog's Heart’ Alexander Ivashkin

• Glasgow: James Dillon's ‘Nine Rivers’ Paul Conway

• Zurich: Dalbavie's ‘Gesualdo’ Peter Palmer

• Tanglewood Festival 2010 Christian Carey

• Manchester: Friedrich Cerha Kaleidoscope Tim Mottershead

• Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2010 Paul Conway

• Further reports from London, Manchester, Birmingham, St Albans Martin Anderson, Jill Barlow, Tim Mottershead, Paul Conway

• ‘Contemporary Music’ Tom Rutherford-Johnson

• John Cage's ‘4' 33”’ Rodney Lister

• The Music of Christian Wolff Helen Thomas

• Berio's Sequenzas Peter Roderick

• Ligeti's ‘Gesammelte Schriften’ Arnold Whittall

• Arvo Pärt Benjamin Skipp

• Philip Glass Colin Clarke

• Dallapiccola Tim Mottershead

• Further Reviews Bret Johnson, Paul Conway, Peter Palmer, Colin Clarke, Geoffrey Alvarez, Richard Leigh Harris, Tim Mottershead, Guy Rickards