My opera Taverner projects onto the life and mind of the sixteenth century English composer John Taverner certain perennial preoccupations of my own, notably with the nature of betrayal at the deepest levels. The ‘action’ is within Taverner's mind; and so, despite constant references to sixteenth century sources (mostly English), neither time nor place are treated realistically. While time becomes non-sequential and functions in a formal and quasi-musical sense as a means of presenting event and anti- or shadow-event, place is as particular or as general as the text demands, and needs no definition by conventional ‘scenery’.

‘Jemand musste Josef K. verleumdet haben.’—‘Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K.’ So begins Franz Kafka's The Trial. But had someone been telling lies about Joseph K.? The phrase, as it stands, is ambiguous. We read on, however, expecting sooner or later to find out the truth. But the novel provides no answer, either for us or for Joseph K. himself.

The newcomer to Peter Maxwell Davies's music may well be bewildered by a Stravinskian profusion of widely differing styles. Stravinsky's stylistic progress was at one time misunderstood and severely criticized; but as audiences grew increasingly familiar with the whole of his musical output, the consistency of his musical concerns became obvious. Perhaps because of the more sympathetic view of Stravinsky's music, Davies has been better understood in this respect, even though over the seventeen years or so of his acknowledged output, the disparities of style are at least as great as they were with Stravinsky.

The visitor to the Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford, the Parish Church of St. Botolph's in Boston, Lincolnshire, or the Collegiate Church of the Holy Trinity in nearby Tattershall, will find them in much the same condition as did John Taverner more than four hundred years ago. But he will find no trace in these noble piles of the man who served them so well. Nor is he likely to hear in their devotional services, or in any others in England, the music Taverner wrote for their choirs. Reasons for this neglect are not difficult to find. Very little church music composed by Taverner and his contemporaries was copied (and none printed) in score during their lifetime. Most of the part-books in which their music was inscribed were treated carelessly and later lost or destroyed. With the rapid religious and musical developments that followed the death of Henry VIII in 1547, the compositions of these men became liturgically irrelevant on the one hand and stylistically outdated on the other; compared with the melodic restraint and textural clarity of Elizabethan music, their writing sounded old-fashioned, extravagant and impenetrably thick, and it was far more difficult to sing. Therefore, from the beginning of the Elizabethan era to the end of the Victorian, the compositions of men such as Taverner, Robert Fayrfax and Nicholas Ludford remained unseen and unheard except by the occasional musical antiquarian.

• Symphony No.2 Calum MacDonald

• Haiku II Calum MacDonald

• In the Beginning Calum MacDonald

• Laborintus II Calum MacDonald

• Domaines Misha Donat