A re-evaluation of the work and status of a composer not infrequently occurs a decade after death and/or during an anniversary year. Howard Ferguson was born on 21 October 1908. The centennial year of his birth saw a number of high-profile concerts and talks devoted to his music and public life. My aim is not to survey the career and work of a musician who contributed significantly to many mainstream activities and events in 20th-century British musical life, including the war-time National Gallery concerts, the Vaughan Williams-Finzi composer circle, chamber music performance, the Royal Academy of Music, OUP and Associated Board interpretative editions.

Musical activity is one of the many forms of purposeful human activity. Its peculiarity lies in its creative character – an attribution which brings to mind the concept elaborated by Mooney (1963), in which the quality of creativeness was evoked in relation to the product (or artistic work), the process of its production and its author. One aspect of Mooney's reflections that are of importance to the present discussion is his observation that a considerable influence on creative activity is exercised by the favourable or detrimental conditions under which it arises (atmosphere, social environment, historical context).

From the moment Schoenberg saw the need to use the designations Hauptstimme and Nebenstimme, the issue of differentiating material in complex post-tonal scores has been significant. It has formal and textural connotations, and it relates directly to the experience of listening to this music.

In the first composition class I ever took, the professor began by asking us why we wanted to compose. This was a question I had been wrestling with for some time; I had just switched programs at my university and had needed to justify, to myself at least, why I should have taken the biggest risk of my academic career thus far. The question, put so baldly by this professor, had never actually been asked by anyone else when I announced that I wanted to change my course; secretly, I was glad of this, for I felt the answer was too personal and private and new to me to survive any kind of display, or attack.

• Birmingham: Howard Skempton Calum MacDonald

• Sydney: Brett Dean's ‘Bliss’ Michael Hooper

• Manchester: the Mahler commissions Tim Mottershead

• Manchester: Anthony Gilbert Paul Conway

• Liverpool: Ensemble 10/10 Helen Thomas

• Stockholm 2007-9: Marie Samuelsson Guy Rickards

• London: John Adams premières Robert Stein

• Further reports from London, Chichester, San Francisco and Belgrade Malcolm Miller, John Wheatley, Jeff Dunn, Donata Premeru

• Northcott and Scruton Tim Rutherford-Johnson

• Peter Schmelz's ‘Unofficial Soviet Music’ Alexander Ivashkin

• William Alwyn's ‘Composing in Words’ Paul Conway

• Nicholas Maw's ‘Sophie's Choice’ Paul Conway

• Morton Feldman Colin Clarke

• Richard Ayres Peter Reynolds

• Elinor Remick Warren Bret Johnson

• Thomas Adès Paul Conway

• Further reviews Peter Palmer, Colin Clarke, Guy Rickards, Paul Conway, Calum MacDonald, Bret Johnson