Among many other even less important things, the 20th century has been the Age of Musicology. If music as the object of historical and theoretical enquiry began to impinge on the Academy well before 1900, it has taken the 20th century to explore its full potential for various kinds of systematic, even scientific analysis. And so a problem has emerged, for although most musicologists accept that compositions are at least a part of their subject-matter, they have difficulty with the proposition that composition – the creative act – itself is a part of musicology. In a sense, therefore, it is entirely logical for the British Academy to consider ceasing its financial support for postgraduate courses in composition.

Per Nørgård makes an improbable Grand Old Man. For a start, he's not nearly old enough; though he was 65 on 13 July this year, you wouldn't imagine to look at him that he was much past his mid-forties. Nørgård, moreover, cuts no establishment figure: he is a large, imposing man, with a thatch of reddish-blonde hair splashed on top of a rugby-player's frame that suggests he is about to explode into action at any moment. But Grand Old Man he already is: with the deaths of his teachers Vagn Holmboe (last September, at the age of 88) and Finn Høffding (this March, at an Olympian 98), Nørgård is now the senior figure in Danish music; there are older composers, of course, but none of his international standing. He doesn't act the part, though: his gestures are gentle, his conversation calm. Indeed, he talks about himself and his music with a quiet conviction that draws in the listener like a youngster listening to a bedtime story.

The instinct to compose ‘symphonically’ – insofar as we understand what this designation has come to mean – has taken a battering in our century: a century still licking wound after wound inflicted by the calculated havoc of war wreaked on whole populations, and compounded by a premeditated serial cruelty unprecedented in world history. As if in anticipation of this unleashed depravity, and then as its indirect consequence, the nucleus of unshackled symphonic creativity shifted from the centre of Europe to selected geographical ‘outer frontiers’ of the continent. Scandinavia's star was modestly ascending many decades before the 19th century drew to a close. Then, for the first quarter of the 20th, there emerged the towering figure of Sibelius, implanted in a small country which won its autonomy during his years of productivity. Compositional talent in Finland has reasserted itself during this century's last quarter. And from within that tenacious nation the most commanding figure presently endowed with the ability to rethink and put symphonic syntax to advantage is Aulis Sallinen (born 1935), though his international reputation rests upon the new life he has injected into the art form of opera.

The Swedish compser Anders Eliasson is a dancer on the volcano of desperation and in this respect the successor of Allan Pettersson. On the other hand his structures are extremely vital and concentrated, without resorting to lengths dictated by atmosphere. The trembling density and shivering complexity of his elaborated architectonics are always emotionally accessible, and the incessantly contrasting rhythmic obsessions never fall into additive isolation; the tearing, torturing tension is under constant formal control, due to the absolute singlemindedness in focussing harmonic development. Eliasson interweaves merciless terror and lyricism from another world.

• Bartk as Ethnomusicologist Malcolm Gillies

• Barraqu's Debussy Chris Dingle

• Warlock the Composer Mike Smith

• Messiaen the Teacher Chris Dingle

• Arv Prt Peter Quinn

• Lepo Sumera's Fifth Symphony Mike Seabrook

• Stephen Montague David Denton

• Weinberg's War Trilogy Paul Rapoport

• British String Quartets Guy Rickards

• Perspectives in New Piano Music Raymond Head

• ‘Isolamenti’ John Waterhouse

• Thea Musgrave David Denton

• Swiss operas, Rhaetian and French Peter Palmer

• Samuel Barber Piano Music Calum MacDonald

• Henri Sauguet's Symphonies Bret Johnston

• Iieder by Reger and Schoeck Peter Palmer

• British Chamber Music Tristram Pugin

• Toshio Hosokawa John Warnaby

• Kalevi Aho's Tenth Symphony Martin Anderson

• Unsuk Chin's Piano Concerto James Webb

• James Macmillan's Piano Trio Ronald Weitzman

• Recent Music at the St Magnus Festival John Wamaby

• Holmboe premires in London Guy Rickards

• Music in High Places Howard Skempton

• Isleworth Festival Alan Gibbs

• Judith Weir's Piano Concerto Paul Conway

• Crazed of Cheltenham Calum MacDonald

• Early Prom premires Malcolm Miller

• John Adams's Scratchband Bret Johnson