ABSTRACT
Musicology is rather keen on labels, compartments, schools of thought and the rest. This is evidence of tidy minds but also of the kind of categorization that existed before the ‘new musicology’ of the late 1980s and 1990s developed a more holistic, flexible and perhaps sociological view. Ian Pace, in an overview of Christopher Fox’s earlier music, addressed some fundamental issues about labelling, reminding us that the stylistic pigeonholing of composers by critics diverts our attention from the many similarities of technical intent, exploration of sound world, and even aesthetic parameters that these musicians often share.1 We like our composers to have a recognizable personal ‘style’, and it worries and confuses us when composers change direction, sometimes quite radically. There are numerous examples of this: Penderecki metamorphosed from avant-garde experimentalist2 to romantic symphonist, Stockhausen from dissonant pointillist to lyrical melodist.3
