The subject indicated by my title is probably the obscurest in the whole of musicography. I say “musicography,” not “music,” because musically it is not, in my submission, obscure at all; it is merely complex. But musicians do not tend to write, and musicographers do not tend to hear.

Every music student knows that both oratorio and opera were developments of the early form of drama; indeed opera of a kind existed long before the Christian era and is as old as the drama itself. In England oratorio may be said to be the successor of the medieval Mystery play, and opera that of the Morality.

Bartók's unique one-act opera lacks all that external stage-curiosity which was an essential part of the late nineteenth-century opera. He does not take over anything directly either from the German or from the Italian type of opera. Both in the musical and dramatic construction Bartók declines to use the well-known schemes. Almost nothing happens on the stage. Apart from some lighting effects, the tricky technical equipment of the modern stage is at a standstill during the performance of Bluebeard's Castle. One could very well imagine a performance of this work on the old Shakespearian stage in its complete simplicity, yet achieving the full effect of the opera. Actually, an abstract stage, concentrating on the essentials of the drama, would be the most suitable for this work.

For a long time now—long when we consider the quick, changing time-scale of our days—electronic music has been with us. The public at large usually remains cold, confused or merely dazed when faced with any new aesthetic experience. Critics, musicologists and the like still seem, as usual, to be unable to predict what will happen to this peculiar, mysterious and often anathematized way of handling musical composition, while many traditionally-minded composers consider it a degrading destruction of the art of music. On the other hand, the electronic medium seems to attract a long, motley caravan of young, inexperienced and often unprepared ‘beatnik type’ self-titled composers, who believe that the world began yesterday and that you only have to push buttons and prepare IBM cards to obtain magical results. Probably not since Schoenberg proclaimed the equal value of the twelve semitones of our sacred but by now obsolete tempered scale has twentieth-century music been faced with such a bewilderment.

In the 1920s there were plenty of new opportunities for young composers to meet colleagues of all ages in the many circles, societies and associations which were then in existence. The most interesting, though short-lived of them was the Leningrad Association of Contemporary Music (LASM), which declared itself to be ‘a gathering of everyone connected with music today’. The Association was planned as a local branch of the International Society of Contemporary Music (ISCM) and of the central Moscow association. But in fact the LASM acted quite independently. Its founders were people who were already well-placed and even high-ranking in the country's musical life: the musicologists and critics Boris Asafyev (Igor Glebov), Vyacheslav Karatigin, Alexander Ossovsky and Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov, the composers Yuliya Weysberg, Alexander Zhitomirsky, Andrey Paschenko, Yuriy Tyulin, Maximilian Shteinberg, Lyubov Shtreikher-Bikhter and Vladimir Shcherbachev. Their first meeting took place on 15 April 1925 at the home of Rimsky-Korsakov and Weysberg.

In its unswerving devotion to new music at its most uncompromising, the Flemish Transit Festival represents a model of the kind of festival that has now almost vanished from Britain. Based in the intimate university town of Leuven, the 2012 festival was the thirteenth: 48 hours of music and events concentrated into a weekend, running from Friday night to Sunday (26–28 October). Located mainly in the unprepossessing concrete 1970s STUK arts centre (with surprisingly good acoustics), the 12 events (plus pre-concert talks) followed upon one another with a rapidity that almost negated the opportunity to draw breath, let alone eat in between.

Deirdre Gribbin's piano concerto, The Binding of the Years, written between 2009 and 2012, was given its UK première by soloist Finghin Collins with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Alan Buribayev at a Maida Vale Studio concert on 15 March. Its evocative title refers to the gathering and securing of 52 reeds that symbolized the old years in Aztec culture; that civilization's rituals connected with fire and time form part of the inspiration behind Gribbin's new work.

The full score of Béla Bartók's one-act opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle (1911) reached its final form through many intermediate stages and after many years. The most comprehensive revision had been carried out in 1917 before Bluebeard was finally put on the programme of the Budapest Opera House. Bartók's revisions concerned not only the ending of the opera and the vocal parts but also the instrumentation. On the basis of all available primary sources, the present article examines how the instrumentation changed between 1911 and 1925, when the full score was published by Universal Edition. As a result of experiences gained during rehearsals of The Wooden Prince in 1917, Bartók added two instruments, the celesta and the xylophone, which he had originally not used in Bluebeard. However, the original score included two tenor tuba parts, which he later replaced with trumpets and trombones. In the revised score Bartók applied new instrumental techniques, corrected an unplayable passage, made the orchestral material thinner in favour of the vocal parts, and altered the instrumentation in order to emphasize motivic connections. Most of these alterations, however, do not represent a conceptual change in the opera's instrumentation but rather realize Bartók's original ideas in a more precise and more elaborate way.

• Leon Kirchner David Matthews

• Begin Again: John Cage Rodney Lister

• Schuman, Persichetti, Mennin Bret Johnson

• Twelve-tone Dallapiccola Tim Mottershead

MANSURIAN: Monodia. Viola Concerto (‘…and then I was in time again’); Violin Concerto; Lachrymae; Confessing with Faith. Kim Kashkashian (via), Leonidas Kavakos (vln), Jan Garbarek (ss), The Hilliard Ensemble, Münchener Kammerorchester c. Christoph Poppen. ECM New Series 472 7842 (2-CD set).

The music of British-Albanian composer Thomas Simaku (b. 1958) bears the hallmarks of both his formative training and working life in Albania, and the widening of musical palette that came with his move to the UK in 1991. In this article the music from the late 1990s to the present day is considered, with particular attention to more recent works. An overview of some stylistic and technical aspects of this music is offered through analytical observations centred on three dualities: simplicity and complexity, the individual and the group, and stasis and movement. This wide-ranging account aims to open the door for further scholarship around this rich and multifaceted music.

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.

The veteran Italian composer Goffredo Petrassi died on 2 March, aged 98. Not only was he a vital figure in the development of Italian music in the 20th century, but also had a significant international impact though performances of his compositions, his work with the ISCM and as a conductor and adjudicator. He was especially renowned as a teacher: many important figures in the music of our time studied with him at some period. Here two friends pay tribute.

MAXWELL DAVIES: De Assumtione Beatae Mariae Virigins; Brass Quintet; Beacons of Hope; Commemoration Sixty; Blind Man's Bluff; Prayer of Thanksgiving in Times of Terror; A Sad Pavan for These Distracted Times. London Sinfonietta c. Oliver Knussen; The Wallace Collection; Central Band of the Royal British Legion c. Ted Whealing; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Central Band of the Royal British Legion, Trumpets of the Royal Military School of Music – Kneller Hall, London Symphony Chorus c. Peter Maxwell Davies; Lucy Shelton, Clare Booth; Choir of Her Majesty's Chapel Royal, St. James' Palace c. Andrew Gant; Pavel Haas Quartet. MaxOpus Custom Compilation CDs.

MAXWELL DAVIES: Naxos Quartets Nos. 5 and 6. Maggini Quartet. Naxos 8.557398

One of the more telling indicators of Luigi Russolo's (1885–1947) Anglo-American reception is his description in Grove as an ‘Italian inventor, painter and composer’. Within this lurks the devaluation of his composing efforts in comparison to his work as the maker of intonarumori (noise instruments), his authoring of new aesthetic ideas, and his activities as a painter. There is little, perhaps, to argue with in this assessment, for (somewhat ironically) Russolo's music of the future has been consigned irrevocably to the music of the past; Raymond Fearn has suggested that ‘the musical remnants from this period have remained to a large extent in the realm of musical archaeology’. The only material traces available for musical archaeologists are the opening seven bars of the score of Il risveglio di una città (The Awakening of the City; 1913–14): the machines that were to play it were destroyed during the Second World War. The loss of Russolo's compositions has inevitably distorted our understanding of his work and has served to throw attention onto those progressive, and sometimes speculative, theoretical and mechanical aspects of it that have survived in written accounts, at the expense of those elements that are of a more traditional or pragmatic nature. Study of the remaining fragments of Il risveglio di una città, leavened with necessary doses of circumspection and speculation, forms a vital and hitherto under-utilized component to any assessment of Russolo's career.

The difficulties of attempting to translate a popular novel into an operatic medium were apparent in Nicholas Maw's recent opera based on Sophie's Choice. Nigel Osborne's new opera followed the same dangerous path in tackling Daniel Mason's highly successful historical novel, The Piano Tuner.