As one gets older, remote events and experiences, even from childhood, are more easily recalled than those of the middle distance. But although for me 1936 belongs to that middle distance, certain events have singled it out in my memory. It was in that year that I went to Barcelona for the festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music. One of the two selected British works was an Overture of mine (since withdrawn); the other was Benjamin Britten's Suite for violin and piano, superbly played by Antonio Brosa. As I had been living abroad for some years, I had not met Britten before. I immediately became aware of his extraordinary musical ability and his immense knowledge of music. Since he was subsequently to have such a profound influence on my life and musical development, that first meeting would in any case have made the year memorable for me.

Though it is with the best of intentions that we mark off each decade of an artist's life as the signal for a special renewal of interest in his work, we ought not to expect him to relish so artificial a process, still less to reflect it in the chief phases of his creative activity. Yet, assuming that this has not become merely repetitive, a decade can serve well enough in the measurement of stylistic developments. And in Britten's case we can, without stretching points too implausibly, find a fairly workable correspondence to divisions that emerge from an examination of his aims and methods. Obviously, the very eventful decade from his op. 1 (of 1932) onwards needs to be much subdivided in any intelligible account; but from, say, the Serenade of 1943 (his 30th year), we can pick on certain of his works at roughly ten-year intervals which, notable achievements in themselves, also provide revealing clues to the series that were to follow: The Turn of the Screw in 1954 and Curlew Riverin 1964 can be assigned such key positions. It may be that we shall come to see Death in Venice of 1972/3 as another, but I propose to regard it as the culminating work of the decade initiated by the first of the church parables.

The neglect of the music of Frank Bridge by performers and writers since his untimely death in 1941 has delayed a full examination of one of the most fascinating developments of style and personality in English 20th-century music. It is the record of an artist's slow recognition of his deepest self, after a leisurely decade of reasoned creative work in which he had yet to explore the darkest recesses of his subconscious. Such a source of inspiration and revelation does not appear to have been necessary for the realization of the rational, even sceptical creative urge of his early years: it was only after a long period of inward development that his rich and complex character balanced that sort of neat orderliness with a dark irrational fantasy. Possibly the experience of the war marshalled the hidden forces in Bridge's nature, and forced him to come to terms with them. Even so, his enquiring mind, always alert to the development of style, might well have led him on to self-discovery by means of linguistic experiment. Certainly the music prior to his unexpectedly radical development in the 1920's is of increasing depth and penetration.

This year two important new instrumental works by Nicholas Maw have received their first performances: the Serenade for chamber orchestra (Singapore, 31 March) and Life Studies for 15 solo strings (Cheltenham, 9 July). With the Five Irish Songs for mixed chorus (Cork International Choral Festival, 4 May) and a new piano composition (Personae, London, 2 August), 1973 looks like being one of Maw's most productive years. Stylistically it may also prove to have been the most crucial since 1962, when Scenes and Arias was first heard. Even after a single performance, I think there can be no doubt that Life Studies is a remarkable and convincing composition which could inaugurate a new approach by Maw to the whole question of form in instrumental music.