Robert Ashley's opera Perfect Lives was conceived for the medium of television and first broadcast (by the UK's Channel 4) in 1984. Partly for this reason, and also for other factors (the apparently necessary involvement of Ashley himself as narrator; the absence of a complete, fully notated score) the work has received very few live performances. In 2011 the New York City-based performance collective Varispeed reconceived the work as a day-long, site-specific event, following Ashley's available notations and recorded performances in broad outline but departing from them in creative ways. In this article Varispeed founding member Gelsey Bell describes the working processes and decision-making that informed the collective's approach to this experimental classic.

This article argues that Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern demonstrates a unique approach to music-drama that stems from the perceptual capacities of listeners, and their desire to search for meaning in what they hear. Beginning with the claim that Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern can be viewed as the culmination of an aesthetic project begun at the point of Lachenmann's emergence as a distinctive voice of the European avant-garde during the 1960s, the article first examines two major aspects of Lachenmann's aesthetics – musique concrète instrumentale and aura – outlining a composing philosophy that has been at the heart of Lachenmann's practice throughout his career. The article claims that Lachenmann sought to establish a rejuvenated semiotics, freed from cultural baggage and tied to the perceptual and cognitive capacities of listeners. Drawing upon the studies of Naomi Cumming and Luke Windsor, it outlines a theoretical framework that takes into account this composing philosophy and its implications, applying it in analyses of various excerpts from Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern. My analysis illuminates a music-drama that forms around the interplay of internally represented images and sensations, the emergence of which is facilitated by a musical language that prepares sounds to take on certain types of meaning. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the possible implications this has for audience members.

Horatiu Radulescu's Fifth String Quartet, ‘before the universe was born’, is a shining example of his radical compositional approach. With an intense interest in creating a rich, numinous sound-world constructed firmly on principles of nature, science and ancient philosophy, Radulescu developed a unique compositional language that breaks with traditional musical conventions. In hopes of illuminating the inner workings behind his often enigmatic compositional process, this article examines various aspects relating to Radulescu's Fifth Quartet: the work's formal construction, with a focus on its notation and overall large-scale harmonic development; the Quartet's rhythmic devices and their link to the philosophical underpinnings that drive the work; the extended instrumental string techniques employed throughout, the sounds they achieve, and how they are executed; and the work's spectral pitch organisation.

Close examination of John Adams's oeuvre reveals that symmetry is one of the predominant features of his music. Three common types of symmetry are encountered in Adams's works: reflection, translation and rotation. This article investigates these symmetries and tracks their development throughout Adams's compositional career. An analysis of selected works from the 1970s (China Gates and Phrygian Gates), 1980s (Grand Pianola Music and Fearful Symmetries) and 1990s (the Violin Concerto and Century Rolls) highlights the most pervasive symmetry in each decade and shows a shift from preconceived overarching symmetries that frame entire musical structures to smaller-level symmetries that affect the music at a level of phrase and motivic structure.

This paper, originally the keynote address at a conference on notation in contemporary music held at Goldsmiths, University of London, in October 2013, examines the relationship between notation and improvisation in today's music. Starting from the position that improvisation is a method of composition, and that the two are in no way opposites, the author reflects on his dual practice as composer of often complexly notated scores and an improvising musician. The title subverts the familiar claim that it is improvisation that liberates the musician from the supposed tyranny of fixed notation, suggesting instead that notation may serve a valuable function in suggesting possible directions or points of focus in free improvisation.

The Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival has, for many years, been the date in the UK new music calendar. Every November, friends and enemies gather under the heavy skies of a Yorkshire micro-climate to listen to, perform and discuss new work. When Graham McKenzie took over as Artistic Director six years ago, there were murmurings that it might change out of all recognition. He certainly made a few bold decisions, introducing more multi-media, cross-disciplinary elements, installations and audio walks, and moving beyond St Paul's Hall to more contemporary spaces like the blending shed at Bates Mill. He also gave the festival's branding the once-over, so that HCMF now always appears as hcmf// (perhaps a nod to the trendy Wire magazine-reading audience he was trying to attract). Little of what he instigated at the start of his tenure has changed, but if there were fears that it would spell the end of ‘proper concerts’, one needn't have worried.

Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival's promotion of Scandinavian and Catalan music – through established partnerships with The Danish Composers’ Society and Music Norway, and a more recent association with Catalonia's Institut Ramon Llul – have helped to bring under-represented regions for contemporary music to the foreground of the international scene.

Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival ended with a folk-themed Sunday, to draw together the interests from the Danish and Norwegian representations with British musical cultures, and to provide a markedly different end to this year's festival than others recent. As an audience member, I found that the focus upon learning activities, free concerts and vernacular and improvisatory approaches to music-making provided a strong feeling of community throughout the day. Danish fiddler Poul Bjerager Christiansen, who coordinated the morning's traditional dance workshop, stated that we can choose to see traditional music as a base for creating new music; it is clear that Graham McKenzie wants to see it as a base for creating new festival environments, in which we are invited to explore and make our own connections.

Contemporary works are often a feature of the BBC orchestras’ annual Proms concerts, attracting considerable media attention. However, each of these orchestras programmes a wide variety of new music throughout the year, most of which receives significantly less extensive coverage by the national press. Their Autumn 2013 schedules, for example, contained several first performances, some from composers on the threshold of a professional career, others from more established figures, all deserving to be widely reported.

The string quartet retains the pull of intimacy and the promise of prestige it has held for composers since the late eighteenth century. Unlike, say, the historically over-determined piano sonata, there is a degree of flexibility and adaptability in the form that has allowed a wide range of modern composers, from Xenakis to Shostakovich to Rihm, to make distinctive marks on it.

The Kreutzer Quartet's ‘Beethoven Begins’ series, based around the great German master's Op.18 string quartets, has included an example of new music in each of its six concerts, a tribute to the players’ eclectic tastes, versatility and accomplishment in diverse repertoire. Their generously filled programmes all take place within the flaky grandeur of Wilton's Music Hall, one of London's quirkiest and most bewitching venues.

It would be simplistic to suggest that contemporary classical music exists solely within or around large institutions. For at least 50 years now, this music has also found a home in small galleries, loft spaces and basements, and other small, independent venues around the world, as seen for example in the Downtown New York scene. London venue Cafe Oto – operating out of a warehouse in Dalston since 2008 – runs on similar principles to specialist Downtown venues such as the Stone, in that it boasts a wide-ranging multi-genre programme focused on various experimental and avant-garde musics, such as noise, free jazz, and contemporary classical.

Since 1972, the Parisian Festival d'Automne has organised dozens of events every year in the field of theatre, dance and music. The list of premieres is impressive, and comprises all the major names in the realm of contemporary art. The concerts represent a kind of anthology of recent outstanding achievements, combined with commissions from younger composers, and a recapitulation of important works of twentieth-century music which may be mentioned in every music history but are rarely performed: this year, for instance, featured Karlheinz Stockhausen's Trans. Offering a precious and vital complement to the other various Parisian seasons, the Festival has no venue of its own, so that, as quite a number of the concerts are co-produced with other institutions, the ‘visibility’ of the festival stems only from the quality of the programming, the excellence of the musicians, and the interaction with the overall artistic project.

TRANSIT is a festival packed into just a weekend. Despite this, it consistently punches above its weight in international standards of performance and a commitment to today's most adventurous music; this year's festival featured 18 premieres. It is one of the most attractive autumn European festivals, based in the Flemish town of Leuven, though the sheer number of events leaves little time for sightseeing.

The Amsterdam contemporary music scene has long been known for its open-mindedness and willingness to explore, and any given evening can be a toss-up between electronic clog dance (served with soup) or piano-playing dogs. A petri dish of creativity, this is given a podium and a voice by the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. This edifice of concrete and glass, moored like an industrial spaceship on the banks of the river IJ, is branded in English as the ‘Concert Hall of the twenty-first century’, and indeed their flavourful mix of programming celebrates the more unusual sides of classical music, from the very old to the very new, from Gesualdo consorts to dirty electronics.