The conference presented by the Finnish Institute in London in 1992 made me think differently about the effect of national origins on composers in the later twentieth century. During the papers and discussions the subject emerged as elaborate and confused – as many issues affected by nationalism are – involving almost everything to do with a composer’s background and sources. I began to think of my own formative years in England and America, looking at myself as a kind of composer's case history from then onwards. To begin with, any creative artist is rooted in his own environment and conditioning: very few have the means to transcend these and develop into something universal. Some of the interest in the poet Philip Larkin is concerned with exploring how his deliberately provincial insularity did not prevent him from treating the major themes of death, disillusion and despair, communicating directly to both critical and public acclaim. But the British context for the so-called serious composer, as opposed to the media composer providing applied music, has declined, although some manage to exist fruitfully in both categories.

Ives and Cage envisaged everyone as his/her own composer. For Ives this was a kind of unrealisable ideal: for Cage it was a product of Zen openness, a question of attitude. Of course, this can be liberating but in the process the notion of professional expertise in composition is being eroded, something which is never likely to happen with engineers, lawyers or doctors. We are back in the 1920s when Britten was asked what else he would do if he really wanted to be a composer. And we may have to acknowledge what Erkki Toivanen told us in his Conference paper, ‘The Allure of Distant Strains’: ‘It is quite self-evident that music has not played a central role in defining English or British national identity.’

It was interesting to consider national issues in terms of both British and Finnish composers, although discussion was too often historical and backward looking. It was limited, too, since we knew so little of each other's music.