Hans Pfitzner was born in 1869 in Moscow—where his parents were temporarily residing—and is sometimes described as a German-Russian composer, although in fact he had no Russian blood. He grew up in Frankfurt o/M, where his father was Musikdirektor at the Municipal Theatre. From him he had his first music lessons, and perhaps the environment helped foster his interest in opera and music for the stage. He studied piano with James Kwast and composition with Ivan Knorr—the teacher of Cyril Scott and Percy Grainger—at Hoch's Conservatoire in Frankfurt. After finishing there, he took up the first in a series of teaching and conducting appointments which lasted until the advent of Hitler in 1933. These included a period as Director of Strasbourg Conservatoire, conductorship of the Kaim Orchestra in Munich, and frequent appearances as conductor with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom he also made very notable recordings, especially of the Beethoven symphonies—performances which rank with the finest I have ever heard. Strasbourg University honoured him in 1913 with the degree of Ph.D., and in the same year he was married—in Canterbury, Kent, to which city he and his bride had fled to avoid unpleasant entanglement with Percy Grainger, who considered himself a suitor for the same girl's hand.

After a period in which he had concerned himself with ‘free’ dissonance, Weill began, in 1926–27, to return to a harmonic language based on tonality. Many other composers were doing something of the kind at that time, and, like him, were associating a return to tonality with references to popular dance rhythms, whether traditional or modern. But whereas such figures as Stravinsky, Hindemith, Prokofiev and Milhaud tended to reject traditional harmonic usages, Weill proceeded to develop a largely triadic harmony, paring down his vocabulary to the most basic of chords and progressions. Although the power and originality of that harmony have been widely acknowledged, the technical issues have received little or no attention, at least in any published form. What follows is a preliminary and necessarily selective survey.

Your friends and admirers throughout the world are glad to be able to celebrate your 70th birthday. During your long, delicate and difficult life you have created an oeuvre that will survive the challenges of time.

I have often wondered where you get the strength from. Is it perhaps from the understanding—which came to you very early—that ultimately we humans, as individuals, live in a state of mortal detachment from the course of the universe? Your equanimity in personal affairs has astounded me just as often as your courage in public ones; and your inexhaustible good humor seems to me like a gift from the heavens.

Im Sommer 1948—oder war's 49?—wohnte Brecht in Salzburg bei mir. Ich hatte die Absicht, mit ihm zusammen eine Oper zu machen. Er erzählte mir einen Stoff, den ich vergessen habe. Oder vielmehr, ich vermische ihn in meiner Erinnerung mit der “Dreigroschenoper”, der er sehr ähnlich war. Ubrig blieb nichts als der Titel: “Von den Freuden und Leiden der gröβeren und kleineren Seeräuber”.

It was in the summer of 1948—or was it '49?—that Brecht stayed with me in Salzburg. I meant to work with him on an opera. He outlined a plot, which I have forgotten. Or rather, my memory has jumbled it up with the story of The Threepenny Opera, which it strongly resembled. All that remains is the title: ‘Joys and sorrows of the pirates, great and small’.

Why did I never write the opera? On one point Brecht and I had always done battle, and did so again. Brecht was adamant that the public must clearly understand every single word. I argued that it was necessary only at points when the action moves on; everywhere else, one could rely on the singers' artistry, particularly since the music in any case takes over the text's function. Brecht was cross. Instead of an opera he wrote me a Passion text, Das Stundenlled. It is a choral work without soloists, so here the text is repeated often enough to become comprehensible. Many people were surprised that Brecht of all people should have written a Passion.

The visit of the old lady, after the play of the same name by the Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt (who also wrote the libretto), is Gottfried von Einem's fourth opera. It was performed for the first time in 1971 at the Vienna State Opera, and after being mounted on several German stages in quick succession, it was given its American première in San Francisco last year. Von Einem's first opera, Dantons Tod (after Georg Büchner), won much praise as the major novelty of the 1947 Salzburg Festival. Six years later, also in Salzburg, came Der Prozess (after Franz Kafka); after which there was another pause, of almost ten years, before the next opera, Der Zerrissene (after Johann Nestroy), had its première in Hamburg. Von Einem had up to that time also written five large ballets, a quantity of instrumental music (including several pieces commissioned by leading European and American orchestras) and some vocal music: all in all, therefore, a respectably sizable body of work, especially when one takes into account that self-critical reserve to which his somewhat slow rate of production can be attributed. His consistency, at least in those works that have been repeatedly tried and tested, must perhaps today be counted as one of his most outstanding characteristics.

• Stockhausen's ‘Momente’ Robin Maconie

• Durkó and Huber Stephen Walsh

• Recordings (Hungarian and American music, Weill, Henze, Maxwell Davies) Hugo Cole Rodney Slatford Morris Pert