Fretwork has been most active in this regard, commissioning George Benjamin, Michael Nyman, Elvis Costello, Sir John Tavener, Orlando Gough, John Woolrich, Tan Dun, Alexander Goehr, Fabrice Fitch, Andrew Keeling, Thea Musgrave, Sally Beamish, Peter Sculthorpe, Gavin Bryars, Barrington Pheloung, Simon Bainbridge, Duncan Druce, Poul Ruders, Ivan Moody, and Barry Guy ; many of these compositions may be heard on their 1997 CD Sit Fast.

Since the luminous ' white-note ' Psalm IV setting of 1976, Goehr has urged a return to more traditional ways of composing, using familiar materials as objects of musical speculation, in contrast to the technological priorities of much present-day musical research.

It has also commissioned music from Sir John Tavener, Michael Nyman, Alexander Goehr, George Benjamin, Duncan Druce, Fabrice Fitch, Gavin Bryars, Barry Guy, Poul Ruders, Simon Bainbridge, Ivan Moody, John Woolrich, Thea Musgrave, Peter Sculthorpe, Sally Beamish, Andrew Keeling and Orlando Gough.

Goehr returned to Britain as visiting lecturer at Southampton University ( 1970 – 71 ).

The output of the ensuing twenty years testified to Goehr's desire to use this new idiom to explore ideas and genres that had already become constant features of his work, such as the exploration of symphonic form: Goehr returned to symphonic form in his Sinfonia ( 1979 ) and Symphony with Chaconne ( 1987 ).

* July 11 – July 22 – The Darmstädter Ferienkurse are held in Darmstadt with a series of lectures by Theodor W. Adorno, two public discussions of the new medium of electronic music, and world premieres of works by ( amongst others ) Richard Rodney Bennett, Pierre Boulez, Jacques Calonne, Aldo Clementi, Luc Ferrari, Alexander Goehr, Bengt Hambraeus, Hans Werner Henze, Bruno Maderna, Henri Pousseur, and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Through the chamber music medium Goehr gains an unprecedented rhythmic and harmonic immediacy, while his music remains ever permeable by the music and imagery of other times and places: the Piano Quintet ( 2000 ) and the Fantasie for cello and piano ( 2005 ) are haunted by rich sonorities of a thoroughly Ravel-like quality.

While there he met fellow composers Peter Maxwell Davies and Alexander Goehr, who, together with pianist John Ogdon and conductor Elgar Howarth, formed the New Music Manchester group, dedicated to the performances of serial and other modern works.

In his composition classes Goehr became friends with young composers Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle and pianist John Ogdon, with whom he founded the New Music Manchester Group.

In 1955, Goehr left Manchester to go to Paris and study with Messiaen, and he remained in Paris until October 1956.

The music scene of Paris would make a great impression on Goehr, who became good friends with Pierre Boulez and was involved in the serialist avant-garde movement of those years.

Goehr experimented with Boulez's technique of bloc sonore, particularly in his first String Quartet of 1956 – 57.

Upon his return to Britain, Goehr experienced a breakthrough as a composer with the performance of his cantata The Deluge in 1957 under his father's baton.

Encouraged by his friendship with the choral conductor John Alldis, who was strongly committed to new music, Goehr composed his Two Choruses in 1962, which used for the first time the combination of modality and serialism which was to remain his main technical resource for the next 14 years.

This flexible approach to serialism, integrating harmonic background with bloc sonore and modality is very representative of the type of writing that Goehr developed as an alternative to the strictures of total serialism.

The sixties also see Goehr founding the Wardour Castle Summer School with Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle in 1964, and most importantly, the beginning of Goehr's preoccupation with opera and music theatre.

Goehr found a way of controlling harmonic pace by fusing his own modal harmonic idiom with the long abandoned practice of figured bass — thus achieving a highly idiosyncratic fusion of past and present.

Goehr will return time and again to the idea of carrying out a synthesis of fragments or unfinished projects left by other artists, albeit in a metaphorical way: the cantata The Death of Moses resonates with Schoenberg's unfinished Moses und Aron ; the opera Arianna ( 1995 ) is the setting of the libretto of a lost opera by Monteverdi ; and the posthumously published prose fragments by Franz Kafka lurk behind Das Gesetz der Quadrille ( 1979 ), Sur terre en l ’ air ( 1997 ) and Schlussgesang ( 1990 ).

It is indicative that Goehr should go to Paris not only to attend the classes of Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire, but also to study counterpoint and serialism with Schoenberg scholar and composer Max Deutsch ; even more indicative is the anecdote that Deutsch threw Goehr out of his house upon hearing that the young man intended to study with Messiaen as well as with him.

Walter Goehr had studied with Schoenberg and was constantly surrounded by high calibre composers such as Seiber, Tippett, and others.

Goehr was born in Berlin where studied with Arnold Schoenberg and embarked on a conducting career, before being forced as a Jew to seek employment outside Germany, while working for Berlin Radio in 1932.

He studied at Westminster School, then with John Lambert at the Royal College of Music, with Alexander Goehr at Cambridge University, privately with Tristan Murail in Paris, and on courses given by Olivier Messiaen, Per Nørgård and György Ligeti.

* Arianna ( Goehr ), a 1995 opera by Alexander Goehr

* Promised End, a new opera by Alexander Goehr

It was adapted into a ballet at Sadler's Wells in 1799, and into an opera, Arden Must Die, by Alexander Goehr, in 1967.

It is a memorial to Goehr's conductor / composer father, who had unexpectedly died, and it is based upon a chord-sequence subtly modelled upon ( but not quoting ) the " Catacombs " movement from Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition ( Goehr senior had made a close harmonic analysis of this unusual movement ).

This is already apparent in his breakthrough piece, The Deluge ( 1957 – 58 ), which is inspired by Eisenstein's notes for a film based on a writing by Leonardo da Vinci ; in other words Goehr writes music about a director's notes for a film based on the writings of a painter!

Alexander Goehr was born on 10 August 1932 in Berlin, and his family moved to Britain when he was only a few months old.

What disturbed Goehr was mainly his perception that by the mid-fifties, serialism had become a cult of stylistic purity, modelling itself on the twelve-tone works of Anton Webern.

This débacle, however, had a constructive impact on Goehr: rather than dismissing criticism as the mere result of incompetence on the part of critics and performers, he genuinely faced the questions of the position of the avant-garde composer and his music:

Although Goehr's personal relationship to his father was not unproblematic, Walter Goehr had a determining influence on his son via his work as a conductor: the composers whose work Walter championed — Arnold Schoenberg, Claudio Monteverdi, Modest Mussorgsky, Olivier Messiaen — feature as a red-thread throughout Alexander's output.

* Alexander Goehr page on Schott music publishers ' website

* Alexander Goehr page on LoganArts Management's website

Music which appears to demand an interpretation, but is abstract enough to warrant objectivity ( e. g. Tchaikovsky ’ s 6th Symphony ), is what Lydia Goehr refers to as ‘ double-sided autonomy .’ This happens when the formalist properties of music became attractive to composers because, having ‘ no meaning to speak of ’, music could be used to envision an alternative cultural and / or political order, while escaping the scrutiny of the censor ( particularly common in Shostakovich, most notably the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies ).

Scruton defines the experience of sound as inherently acousmatic, as Lydia Goehr ( 1999 ) paraphrases, " the sound world is not a space into which we can enter ; it is a world we treat at a distance ".

It is no coincidence that Boulez — who had earlier facilitated the performance of Goehr's music — refused to programme Little Symphony: by 1963 Goehr had neatly departed from the style of his Parisian days.

Typically for Goehr, the Japanese texts date back to the 15th century and have been adapted by the composer for setting.

Schott Music provides a full discography by work: Goehr discography

Finding the Key: Selected Writings of Alexander Goehr, edited by Derrick Puffett.

In 1947, Goehr composed the music for the much acclaimed film Great Expectations, directed by David Lean.

Later, encouraged by Alexander Goehr and Hans Keller, he took up composition.

*" The Silken Tent " music by Alexander Goehr, William Byrd, Michael Nyman, Henry Purcell, Claude Debussy etc.