As discussed in Chapter One, Instrumental Theatre falls into two types: one expands the concerto principle, the other relates to rituals. The word concerto is related to concertare, the Italian for ‘join together’ or ‘unite’; at other times, however, it can be related to the original Latin meaning of concertare, ‘to fight’ or ‘to contend’. It is this latter meaning that informs the theatrical concertos of Thea Musgrave and Jeremy Dale Roberts, although for both composers the former meaning also covers the condition the combatants find themselves in at the end of their respective works.

Musgrave was born in Edinburgh in 1928 and is several years older than the other British composers whose works I discuss in this book. She studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris between 1950 and 1954, after attending Edinburgh University. In 1958 she attended the Tanglewood Festival and studied with Aaron Copland. She subsequently became Guest Professor at the University of California and her involvement with the musical life of the United States led her to settle there in1972. From 1987 to 2002 she was Distinguished Professor at Queen’s College, at City University, New York. Performances at the Edinburgh Festival brought her early recognition, but it was her Concerto for Orchestra (1967) that marked her dramatic style of instrumental writing, a style further explored in three solo concertos in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Although she gradually adopted a twelve-note style she was not committed to it, and as a consequence she was never a member of the avant-garde. In fact, most of the British composers I discuss considered her to be a member of the establishment. What they could not deny, however, was her theatrical flair. The Decision, the opera she completed in 1965, proved to be the first of six. Her four theatrical concertos are her Concerto for Orchestra (1967), Clarinet Concerto (1968), Horn Concerto (1971) and Viola Concerto (1973). All require a symphony orchestra so that in this respect they fall outside the usual practice of scoring Music and Instrumental Theatre for relatively modest forces.

She had prepared the ground for them in her Second Chamber Concerto, which William Glock commissioned for a concert at the 1966 Dartington Summer School.