‘Writing music is a confused morass of experiences, emotions and note-by-note decisions.’

One of the questions that I asked most of the contributors to this book was, ‘Is your memory of your music essentially visual or aural?’ Although not the most important topic on my list, I felt it to be valid given that composers make decisions about how to notate their music in order that performers will bring it to life in the way that they intend. Might they not, therefore, both ‘see’ and ‘hear’ the music in their imagination? Judith Bingham's immediate response was to laugh and say, ‘What a strange question.’

I mention this only because I feel that it illustrates something of her character: alongside the warmth, humour and self-deprecation I sensed a kind of solitary toughness, perhaps defensiveness. She certainly wasn't afraid to challenge the thinking behind some of my questions, and she explained that she has a spider-like knack of drawing people to her before making her point.

We met at her home, a flat that occupies the ground floor of an Edwardian terraced house in East London, in July 2011. We talked and ate chocolate biscuits in the front living room where she works (a shrine-like collection of photos and texts – what she calls a ‘visual backdrop’ – pinned to a noticeboard next to her electronic keyboard showed that a work was in progress), and afterwards she posed for a photo in the back garden. It was a long interview because she was a very good talker – by which I mean that she spoke imaginatively and eloquently about both the conscious processes of writing music and the unconscious motivation behind them.

She also made some surprising assertions, smiling or laughing as she did so as if to indicate that she knew she was being controversial. One was that composers probably wouldn't describe themselves as music lovers. Another was that the distinction between ‘serial’ and ‘non-serial’ composition became redundant as a result of Britain escaping invasion during the Second World War. ‘The particular sound of serial music suited the invaded countries better than it did us’, she explained. ‘It was a very different world here. But then I’m always going on about the War…’ Yet another, which I asked her to expand on, was that many composers are unable or unwilling to understand the emotional undercurrents of their own music.