As an harmonic technique, expanded tonality may act either as a decisive stage in a composer's approach to atonality, or as a means whereby he can preserve the essential hierarchies of tonality itself in a context of pervasive chromaticism. For Schoenberg, the expansion of tonality was a process which did not stop until tonality had been ‘exploded’, chromaticism ousting diatonicism just as new types of chord ousted major and minor triads. For Bartók, as, later, for Britten, tonality could survive even without the triad, without fundamental diatonicism. The use of tonal centres—a tonality of single notes—is the hallmark of Bartók's third string quartet, and the tonal centres control the chromaticism, harmonic progressions functioning non-systematically but logically in terms of the schemes of tonal conflicts and relationships appropriate to the work.

Although my compositions are extremely diverse in character, I approach each new one in the same manner. I feel somewhat like an architect, tackling my work in three stages, always in the same order: first the purpose, or reason for which the work is composed; then the architectural structure; then the material of which it is to be built. The purpose of writing my ‘Autumn Music’ was to compose a work in memory of a friend, who, after a long, incurable illness, experienced her last autumn in 1960. Writing this work, I was responding to the end of a suffering human life, and to the season of autumn, with all its manifestations in nature. I made a choice of certain instruments which I found most suitable to express my ideas and feelings. These are: three flutes, three clarinets, a selection of pitched and unpitched percussion, piano, harp, violas, violoncelli and double basses—so in this small orchestra, I have excluded brass instruments and violins. I had two reasons for not using violins—firstly the colouristic factor, because I wished to emphasize the lower register of strings—and secondly, my wish to achieve a transparency of sound, allowing the woodwinds to be rather prominent.

• Matthew' Stars

• Buller's The Cave

• Rowland's The Revolving Sphere

• Sohal's Experiment II