After the early evening launch party for the first edition of my Works of Stockhausen in 1976, a few of us went straight from the publisher's London office in Conduit Street to a Rolling Stones concert at Earl's Court, the centrepiece of which was a giant mockup of the band's iconic Mick Jagger lips with a poking tongue that actually moved. The same message of impish disobedience is reflected in Lucifer's Dance, Stockhausen's rather more challenging image of a wind band as a grimacing face, on the one hand the taunting clown face of a circus hall of mirrors, on the other a tribute to the machinelike discipline, svelte orchestration, and curious up-and-down, side-to-side gymnastics of American jazz of the big band era of Duke Ellington and Glenn Miller.

One of the more telling indicators of Luigi Russolo's (1885–1947) Anglo-American reception is his description in Grove as an ‘Italian inventor, painter and composer’. Within this lurks the devaluation of his composing efforts in comparison to his work as the maker of intonarumori (noise instruments), his authoring of new aesthetic ideas, and his activities as a painter. There is little, perhaps, to argue with in this assessment, for (somewhat ironically) Russolo's music of the future has been consigned irrevocably to the music of the past; Raymond Fearn has suggested that ‘the musical remnants from this period have remained to a large extent in the realm of musical archaeology’. The only material traces available for musical archaeologists are the opening seven bars of the score of Il risveglio di una città (The Awakening of the City; 1913–14): the machines that were to play it were destroyed during the Second World War. The loss of Russolo's compositions has inevitably distorted our understanding of his work and has served to throw attention onto those progressive, and sometimes speculative, theoretical and mechanical aspects of it that have survived in written accounts, at the expense of those elements that are of a more traditional or pragmatic nature. Study of the remaining fragments of Il risveglio di una città, leavened with necessary doses of circumspection and speculation, forms a vital and hitherto under-utilized component to any assessment of Russolo's career.

Joseph Schillinger (1895–1943), the eminent Russian-American music theorist, teacher and composer, emigrated to the United States in 1928, after having served in high positions in some of the major music institutions in the Ukraine, Khar'kov, Moscow, and Leningrad. He settled in New York, where he taught music, mathematics, art history, and his theory of rhythmic design at the New School for Social Research, New York University, and the Teachers College of Columbia University. He formulated a philosophical and practical system of music theory based on mathematics, and became a celebrated teacher of prominent composers and radio musicians. Schillinger's writings include: Kaleidophone: New Resources of Melody and Harmony (New York: M. Witmark, 1940; New York: Charles Colin, 1976); Schillinger System of Musical Composition, 2 vols. (New York: Carl Fischer, 1946; New York: Da Capo Press, 1977); Mathematical Basis of the Arts (New York: Philosophical Library, 1948; New York: Da Capo Press, 1976); Encyclopedia of Rhythms (New York: Charles Colin, 1966; New York: Da Capo Press, 1976).

The Swiss author Gottfried Keller was 27 when he published his first volume of poems in 1846. His early poetry was partly influenced by the German battle for liberalism and the experience of those émigrés who, like Wagner, found their way to Switzerland. The main literary impulses came from Goethe and the German Romantics, impulses finding expression in subjective, even mystical verses. At the same time Keller never lost touch with the here-and-now: a feature that would earn him the description of a poetic realist.

• London, BBC Proms 2009 Rodney Lister, Robert Stein, Paul Conway, Martin Anderson, Malcolm Miller

• Manchester International Festival II Tim Mottershead

• London, ENO: ‘Le Grand Macabre’ Bernard Hughes

• Presteigne Festival 2009 Paul Conway

• Arundel: Montague's ‘Dark Sun’ John Wheatley

• St Albans Cathedral: Casken's ‘Sacrificium’ Jill Barlow

• Viitasaari: Musiikin Aika Calum MacDonald

• Further reports from Manchester and London Tim Mottershead, Jill Barlow

• Back to the Future Tim Rutherford-Johnson

• Sessions, Rochberg, Schuman Arnold Whittall

• Boulez's Flute Sonatina: a new study Neil Boynton

• Richard Taruskin's ‘Russian Music’ and ‘The Danger of Music’ Rodney Lister

• Bussotti's ‘Il catalogo è questo’ Colin Clarke

• Bolcom, Glass, Curran, Sessions Rodney Lister

• Peter Dickinson Malcolm Miller

• Ian Wilson works for string orchestra Tim Rutherford-Johnson

• Further reviews Colin Clarke, Paul Conway, Peter Palmer, Bret Johnson, Arnold Whittall, Bernard Hughes