ABSTRACT
The music of Maurice Ohana has been unjustly neglected in Britain despite his work having long achieved recognition beyond our shores. In France, during his life-time, Ohana ranked among the leading figures of his generation for more than thirty years and received many of the highest official accolades. Infamous insularity is to blame for the relative neglect of Ohana’s music in Britain. Although his music, like that of Dutilleux, was innovative and forward-looking, he distanced himself from the preoccupations of his contemporaries involved at Darmstadt and proclaimed an iconoclastic rejection of serialism. Ohana’s estrangement from Boulez also affected the promotion of his music in the United States. Any resentment Dutilleux may have felt as a result of his exclusion from the programmes and commissions of the Domaine musicale must have been countered by the recognition he received in the United States comparatively early in his career.
