Max and I met in Budapest around 1968. He was a rebellious young man at the time, very antiestablishment, proud of his working-class background and with a streak of Puck in him. Narrow-mindedness, snobbishness, petty-bourgeois Weltanschauung provoked his sardonic sense of humor and he had tremendous fun thumbing his nose at people who he thought deserved it. When he was touring Australia with his ensemble, for instance, he had the impression that his hosts had no idea of music whatsoever. So he introduced his musicians saying “This is Mr. Brahms, this is Ms. Mozart,” and so on. It was not until much later that the penny dropped.

I was Max’s guest in London a number of times and he took me to concerts—such as Stravinsky’s Agon. The music was rather beyond me at the time but I noted his elation, I saw his knowing smile as if he was conducting an intriguing dialogue with the composer.

I also heard/saw some of Max’s own music theater pieces, which fascinated me: Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969) and Vesalii Icones (1969). I have since seen several more of his chamber operas and believe they are his real forte, more so than his orchestra and chamber pieces, which have made less of a mark on an international scale.

I was in London at the time the ensemble Max was running together with Harrison Birtwistle, the Pierrot Players, was renamed, following Birtwistle’s departure, “The Fires of London.” Max came home one day, quite thrilled about it all. “Home” reminds me of his apartment in Fitzroy Square, which was filled with medieval timber furniture. I remember a table, in particular, almost black with age, with a delightful smell of old oak and matching, if rather narrow, benches. From Hungary he had brought with him a Madonna with Child, a wonderful piece of naive folk art.

Max’s penchant for the arts of the Middle Ages was demonstrated also by his choice of subject for his first opera Taverner, his subsequent music theater pieces such as The Martyrdom of St. Magnus, his love of music by Purcell, Gesualdo, and others, which he arranged for The Fires.