The Webern Collection of the Paul Sacher Stiftung inBasel holds a fair copy of an early version of theDrei Stücke für Streichquartett(1913), comprising the song ‘Schmerz, immer Blicknach über’ together with what later became numbers 1and 6 of the Sechs Bagatellen op.9.This document is highly interesting on many counts:here I will mainly discuss one, the existence of adiscarded ending to the third piece (later op.9no.6). This passage is heavily blacked-out in mauvepencil in the manuscript, but the notes, dynamicsand indications can be discerned with a strong lightand magnifying glass.

PN: We talked about fractals in connexion with theinfinity row–this way of letting music grow in whatyou could call open hierarchic layers. It's not adirector and a slave; it's an interdependent way ofproducing music. If you choose a scale — forinstance, the chromatic scale — it contains itselfan infinite number of times; my Second Symphony isbased on realizing this characteristic. But ifinstead of letting it move in this expansive way,where you get wider and wider waves, you thenconstruct it in the opposite way, you get a figurewhere it never gets out of itself. But it createsstill a fractal rhythmic figure, which was veryinspiring for me in all my percussion music from the1970s. I discovered that feature in the beginning ofthe 70s when I composed the Third Symphony. I foundthe infinity row at the end of the 50s, but it wasnot until I had composed the Third Symphony and someworks before it that I realized it contained itsdark side, which is just as rhythmic and just ashierarchic. In my Third Symphony it comes out likean inevitable development. If you imagine the placein the beginning where it gets up to a very hightrill, it comes in lower at half-tempo, and thenagain more slowly further down. It contains itself,like a Russian doll or a Chinese box.

In a recent article on Freud for the GuardianReview, AC Grayling wrote: It ischaracteristic of highly speculative enquiries thatthe thinkers who most influence them are those whofind the most compelling vocabulary — one whichoffers a new way of expressing and articulating itssubject.

• Notes from Webern's Classes MichaelGraubart

• Maurice Ohana Peter Palmer

• Proms 2002 (1): Nørgård andTurnage Robert Stein

• Proms 2002 (2): Sawyer, Payne etc Martin Anderson

• London: Emigré composers Malcolm Miller

• Three Choirs Festival: Lionel Sainsbury's Violin Concerto Raymond Head

• Limousin: Roger Steptoe Malcolm Mille

• Lachenmann's ‘Das Mädchen mit denSchwefelhölzern’ ArnoldWhittall

• Beat Furrer and Olga Neuwirth IvanHewett

• Matthijs Vermeulen's Symphonies PaulRapoport

• Silvestrov, Kancheli, Gubaidulina PeterQuinn

• The Schoenberg Quartet's SchoenbergMark Doran

• Regina Irman Peter Palmer

• Gerard Schurmann BretJohnson

• The Schoenberg Quartet's ZemlinskyLloyd Moore

• Contemporary British Round-up GuyRickards

• Sorabji and Hinton: premières and recordingsMartin Anderson

• Friedrich Cerha Documented JohnWarnaby

On p.64 of the July issue, in the course of a recordreview devoted to the music of Hugh Wood, CalumMacDonald remarked that Scenes fromComus Showed ‘it was Wood who arrivedfirst at much that would recnr in Maw's publishershave gently reminded us that Scences andArias was first performed at the Proms in1962, Scenes from Comus in 1965.Although the published form of Scenes andArias dates from 1966, there is noquestion that it was the earlier work, andMacDonald's remark, inadvertently made, is in error.Apologies are due to both composers.