Finding the Key

Finding the Key

deals with the fundamental issues that face the composer today. In the remarkable 'Letter to Boulez' that opens this collection of essays, Alexander Goehr assesses his own progress away from the avant-garde of the l950s, while his account of the 'Manchester School', of which he, along with Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle, was one of the leading lights, reveals what it was like to grow up musically in a world where modernism was considered almost as a vice. Messiaen's composition classes are described with loving detail; but Schoenberg and Stravinsky were, and remain, at the heart of Goehr's musical concerns. Few books have revealed with such thoughtful honesty how complex the role of the composer is in contemporary society.