This article explores some of the diverse forms that musical notation has assumed in the early twenty-first century and discusses its use along a broad spectrum of creative intention, which includes visual representation of sounds, verbal lists of instructions or provocations, and much else. Drawing upon his own experience as a composer, and on studies of the work of composers both older and younger (Stockhausen, Lucier, Wolff; Molitor, Lely), the author examines the changing meanings of notes, staves and clefs, and the possibilities of graphic scores, text scores, and hybrid forms of notation.

Composer and sonic artist Joanna Bailie has described her creative journey to date as a series of ‘not entirely reconcilable’ stages. This article introduces her work through a broadly chronological survey, tracing her career and offering a detailed consideration of her recent and current musico-aesthetic concerns. It will become evident that paradox and the juxtaposition of ‘not entirely reconcilable’ elements are, as it happens, key positive components of Bailie's art on many levels. Moreover, it will be seen that her work posits a conscious and highly personal response to certain perceived crises regarding ‘contemporary classical music’, a term which Bailie herself detests. Particular reference is made to Bailie's ongoing series of concert pieces combining acoustic instruments with field recordings, Artificial Environments, and a series of site-specific audio-visual installations, the place that you can see and hear.

This article is the first extended analytical study of the music of the Irish composer Andrew Hamilton. It explores the aesthetic ideas that inform Hamilton's music, which often have as much in common with the work of contemporary visual artists and writers as they do with that of other composers. It discusses the particular sense of humour underlying many of his pieces, as well as his music's use of common and supposedly simple materials, which are put in the service of new and original aims.

Little can be said about music during the last century without encountering the men and women who supported it financially. Pierre Bourdieu's impression that the services rendered freely for the good of society reinforce a symbolic debt between giver and recipient complicates motivations behind patronage. Indeed, applying Bourdieu's theory to altruism in general – here, patronage in particular – highlights what could be thought of as a performance of futility: both giver and receiver understand the tenacious terms yet agree nonetheless to act out the process of reaching equilibrium. In the case of iconic music patron Betty Freeman (1921–2009), her support of the avant-garde seems, at times, to call into question on what side of this ‘performed futility’ she existed. This article considers ways in which Freeman's work as patron of the musical avant-garde allowed her to perform her identity as a woman and mother among a community on the fringe.

This article is an analytical study of the music of, and an interview with, the Canadian composer Cassandra Miller. Her use of recordings as starting-points for several of her compositions is explored, as is her fondness for loop-based structures, which are sometimes inspired by analogous processes in the world of film. A brief overview of Miller's work to date is complemented by a close examination of several scores, notably Bel Canto, “O Zomer!” and Philip the wanderer. The concluding interview with the composer presents Miller's present musical and artistic concerns in her own words.

Considering the reputation of the Southbank Centre as a major British authority on new music and art, their playing host to ‘The New Experimentalists’ in January seemed a long time coming. From an institution one year into its twentieth-century musical extravaganza, The Rest Is Noise Festival, an evening highlighting new and recent works by four leading experimental artists came as a welcome break from an exhaustive list of twentieth-century ‘classics’.

‘Why shouldn't we be allowed to write symphonic poems?’ Tristan Murail asked the audience gathered at the BBC's Maida Vale Studios for his interview with Jonathan Cross. Murail, now 67, was visiting the UK for the first time in many years, here for the world premiere of his new orchestral work Reflections, which took place on 2 November 2013 in a robust performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo. Reflections parts one and two evoke certain aspects of early modernist music, and, most of all, the music of Debussy, a composer Murail has come to cite more and more frequently. This diptych premiered by the BBC SO comprises the first two parts, said Murail, of a projected cycle for orchestra of several relatively brief pieces, each of which reflects on a certain image, memory or object of personal significance to the composer.

Howard Skempton's natural habitat is outside the box. Since the late 1960s he has flown in the face of the most fashionable trends in music, initially producing small, spare, almost inscrutable pieces often covering less than a page. He has never stood still, always gently subverting the listener's conception of his music. A major shift came in 1991 with his orchestral work Lento, where not only the size of forces used, but timescale as well, moved into a new area without compromising his own personal voice. More recently he has developed a relationship with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG) resulting in Only the Sound Remains for viola and ensemble (2010), lasting more than 30 minutes. With a seemingly quite traditional surface, the piece's ability to hold a series of seemingly unconnected episodes together whilst retaining a sense of continuity disguised a highly radical structure (see Calum MacDonald's review in TEMPO 253 for more details).

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies' Tenth Symphony was given its premiere by the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at the Barbican on 2 February 2014. The work concerns itself with both the architecture and the death of Francesco Borromini; while perhaps an unusual subject for a symphony, there is precedence in Maxwell Davies's work, as the same man is the subject of his Third Naxos Quartet, and the Third Symphony takes Brunelleschi as its subject. Maxwell Davies has suggested direct links between Borromini's creations and his own – in the programme note we discover that ‘the precise parameters and proportions by which a huge basilica of Borromini's was constructed’ control portions of the work – and indeed the architect's presence pervades the symphony. As well as guiding Maxwell Davies's constructive parameters in the instrumental movements, Borromini is the subject of the chorus' music throughout and almost becomes a character in an operatic scena in the final passage, as he plays out his own suicide to the backdrop of the chorus intoning the names of his most celebrated work. Yet this new symphony rarely betrays its rigorous origins, and aside from passages for percussion mimetic of building activity (hammers, vibraphone, anvils and so on) many aspects in fact suggest a softer, smoother musical language.

The concerto form is well represented in James MacMillan's output. So far, he has written three for piano, two for percussion and one each for violin, viola, cello, trumpet, oboe and clarinet. There is also threaded through his output a series of concertante works, such as A Deep but Dazzling Darkness, for violin, ensemble and tape (2003), A Scotch Bestiary, for organ and orchestra (2004) and the concertino Seraph, for trumpet and strings (2010). All share a common concern to realise fully the soloist's expressive potential.

The Bangor New Music Festival has taken place annually at Bangor University School of Music since its inception in 2000. It is the only festival dedicated to new music in North Wales, and its programme typically encompasses a diverse range of styles and types of performance, including events curated by Electroacoustic Wales, an organisation that ‘exists to promote and encourage the creation and dissemination of electroacoustic music within Wales and beyond’, and which is also based at the University.

Thirteen concerts, eight world premieres, 15 French premieres, 36 composers and some of the top performers, ensembles and conductors in the new music world – yes, Festival Présences had swung back round, like the February hail or the latest season of Big Brother, albeit much more welcome. The theme for Présences's twenty-fourth incarnation seemed at first sight an awkward one: ‘Paris–Berlin’. As themes go, was it not uninspired to just lump two capital cities together, eliciting our suspicion that it was based on the mundane fact that most of the composers happen to live in one of these two cities?

Ultraschall, jointly presented by Deutschlandradio Kultur and Kulturradio vom RBB (Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg), and this year officially renamed Ultraschall Berlin, has been a fixture of the city's concert life since 1999. Festival directors Rainer Pöllmann (Deutschlandradio Kultur) and Andreas Göbel (replacing Margarete Zander for Kulturradio vom RBB) chose to emphasise the two major broadcasters' partnership this year with what they called a ‘duo idea’ running through the festival's programme. Illustrating this theme, orchestral concerts (a pair) opened and closed the festival, the project New Forum Jeune Création paired each of three ensembles with two young composers, and performing duos included GranSchumacher Piano Duo, Claudia Barainsky and Axel Bauni in a concert for voice and piano, and a concert of string duos by members of Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin (who were however not appearing as representatives of this ensemble) with the featured composer/zither player Leopold Hurt, to name but a few. Additionally, a so-called epilogue after the festival's official ending was paired with something that one might have called a prologue, seemingly tacked on as an afterthought: an evening of Klangkunst, electro-acoustic music and performance entitled ‘Art's Birthday’ presented works by Hanna Hartman, Jana Winderen and Nicolas Bernier at the hub of Berlin's club culture, Berghain. Though internationally known in the techno scene for drugs, dancing and dark rooms, Berghain has also long been used as a venue for contemporary and experimental music concerts. The otherwise conservative choices of venue (Radialsystem V, Haus des Rundfunks, and HAU (Hebbel am Ufer) Theatres) and programme – Ultraschall sees itself more as a repertoire-establishing festival, with an emphasis not on premieres but on second and third performances alongside ‘masterpieces’ of contemporary and modern music – made this first concert appear a half-hearted jumping on the ‘new contexts’ bandwagon. And, alongside the repeated, excited announcements of the festival now having its own website (yes in 2014!), there was something of the sense of embarrassment one feels as a teenager bumping into one's parents at a night club.