This is the transcript of an interview with Glasgow-based Australian composer Dr Jane Stanley. The interviewer is Dr Judith Bishop, an Australian poet and lyricist whose words appear in two of the works discussed: ‘14 Weeks’ (from Interval (UQP, 2018) and ‘The Indifferent’ (from Event (Salt Publishing UK, 2007)). The interview was recorded at the University of Glasgow on 29 May 2023 and edited for clarity, length and concision. It was recorded a day after the world premiere of Jane Stanley's 14 Weeks at the Glasgow School of Art Choir Composeher concert in City Halls, Glasgow. In response to a recent survey which revealed huge gender inequalities in the granting of music commissions, Composeher had commissioned seven female composers to write choral works of around ten minutes, of which 14 Weeks was one. The interview ranges widely, from the composer's textural style to her creative process, and touches on her forthcoming composer portrait album, to be released by Delphian Records in 2024.

Beginning with Soliloquy I for solo violin in 1998, the author has been engaged in creating a series of highly virtuosic solo pieces for various instruments. Each piece presents a different character, yet all are framed by a single protagonist who narrates in different languages.

This article focuses particularly on analyses of Soliloquies II, VI, VII, VIII and IX, but also offers a discussion of the genesis of and processes involved in the whole cycle, which now embraces instruments from every section of the orchestra; the most recent, Soliloquy IX, for solo trumpet, was written in 2022. The suitability of the title Soliloquy is also considered; this article in turn could itself be considered a soliloquy.

This article examines how practice-based researchers in a transcontinental intensive residency transformed their practice and developed their skills through composing digital scores. Four researchers from an Australian university undertook an intensive residency in Hamburg, focused on creating and performing new digital scores. An analytical study of this residency was conducted, centred around each researcher's connection to the materials, experiences of flow, changes in digital musicianship and transformations. The study revealed both challenges and illuminating experiences for the researchers. Each composition went through significant changes during, before and after the transcontinental project, resulting in changes to the digital scores, directions for interpretation and the researchers’ established artistic practices. Exposure to new environments and facilities allowed them to develop fresh approaches to collaboration and technology. Engaging with digital scores led to new skills being developed and new collaborative projects with each other and international musicians. The intensive and transcontinental nature of the project resulted in significant developments to the skills and approaches of the four researchers.

Gerald Barry's approach to composition has undergone a number of changes. Frequently these developments coincide with the composition of a large-scale opera. One of these points of transition in his output occurs in the period before he commenced work on The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. Between 1999 and 2000 Barry composed three works – 1998, The Eternal Recurrence and Wiener Blut – in which he attempted to find a new compositional direction after a period in which canonic proliferation dominated his musical material. This article examines some of the main traits of these works, and Wiener Blut in particular, since it contains a greater variety of approaches than the other two compositions. The article also considers how Barry's shift in approach may have been linked to his decision to set Rainer Werner Fassbinder's play. Its quite plain, realistic prose was a contrast to the sort of text Barry had previously chosen to set, requiring a different musical response, and the article draws out some possible connections between Barry's three ‘pointillistic’ compositions and the opera.

In February 2011 the Brunel Sound Series hosted Phill Niblock at Brunel University London, a memorable visit expertly orchestrated by our late colleague Bob Gilmore.1 The occasion featured Phill's Disseminate and the premiere of his TWO LIPS aka Nameless, led by Bob. As an amateur clarinet player, in an ensemble made up of Brunel staff and students, I had the privilege of delving into the intricacies of Niblock's compositions. The event marked a significant chapter in our music department's history, with performances at Brunel University and, a day later, at London's trendiest club for hip contemporary music, Cafe OTO, in Dalston, leaving an indelible imprint on our students’ musical journey, and not just theirs.2

Quarter-tones have the dubious honour of being the microtonal default in Western art music, yet they have been of little recent interest to those most involved with extended intonation. Other microtonal equal divisions have appealed as pragmatic approximations of consonant just-intonation intervals, something that quarter-tones do not offer. This article proposes that quarter-tones can be valued in a different way, for their ability to generate symmetrical harmonic resources that divide the fourth and fifth as the tritone does the octave. These resources are offered as examples of a broader aesthetic of symmetry, which is contrasted with an aesthetic of proportion. These antagonistic principles are explored through the case of the ever problematic tritone, illustrating how proportion and symmetry are best understood using the symbolic resources of just intonation and equal temperament respectively. Drawing on the work of Robert Hasegawa, Georg Friedrich Haas and Ivan Wyschnegradsky, the article argues for a hybrid approach that embraces both just intonation and equal temperament.

This article defines and explores the concept of ‘resistance’ as a source of musical meaning in performance. Using Pierre Bourdieu's concept of ‘habitus’ as a framework, I examine my musical habitus: the embodied, internalised ways I play my instrument and think about music, which reflect my extensive musical histories and the fields in which these histories have taken place. Resistance arises in practice when this habitus is undermined. When the types of musicking undertaken circumvent my habituated understanding of acceptable performance and performative roles, it manifests as a pull towards more familiar modes of musical engagement. Making specific reference to resistance experienced in the development and performance of Alex Harker's Drift Shadow (2021), for solo oboe and electronics, the article outlines the ways in which my subjective relationship to my instrument and my role as a performer produce particular understandings of a work that can then nuance the way I play the piece.

This article proposes a series of connections between the consumption of resources, the creation of new music and ideas about sustainability. A number of examples is discussed, from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, that illustrate the ways in which conspicuous, and often ethically questionable, consumption has been a signifier for innovation in new music. The article concludes by introducing three of the author's recent works, The calm of mountains, This has happened before and Hieroglyph, as models of a compositional practice that attempts to enact and embody ideas of sustainability.