The music which Peter Maxwell Davies was writing immediately before his appointment as Director of Music at Cirencester Grammar School in 1959 was of quite startling originality, and after 20 years the shock effect has scarcely diminished. Perceptible beneath the austerely note-against-note composition of St. Michael (1957) and Prolation (1958) there is, as John C. G. Waterhouse pointed out as far back as TEMPO 69 (Summer 1964), a latent dramatic gift. But despite the high degree of tension inherent in his language, Maxwell Davies seems almost obsessively to avoid opportunities for attractive orchestral dress. One is reminded of his revealing off-the-cuff remark of 1965 (quoted by Bayan Northcott in TEMPO 121): ‘The young composer's only salvation in today's stylistic chaos lies in submitting to the most stringent technical disciplines; then if anything individual comes through at all, at least he will know that it is his own’. Today we can recognize that the harmonic language of Prolation is much more characteristic of its composer than the almost Nono-like appearance of the printed page. But the fact remains that the precisely interlocking multiple Klangfarbenmelodien of St. Michael (section four), like the various rhythmic intricacies of Prolation, are still extremely difficult to bring off in performance, and almost as difficult to hear even when played well.