H. C. Artmann, multilingual poet, translator and Austrian Surrealist, was the most important member of the ‘Wiener Gruppe’. His range of style contributed significantly to a literary renaissance which has been in progress in Austria since 1950. Artmann's ‘Eight Point Proclamation of the Poetic Act’, published in 1953, was the first manifesto of an eclectic circle of Viennese poets and composers. Now known in the histories of literature as ‘die Wiener Gruppe’, this circle proved to be the vanguard of Austria's post-war avant-garde movement. Artmann was widely read, ten years older than the others and a bohemian ‘radical’ around whom the younger artists gathered. He represented the Surrealist and Romantic traditions, and was joined by Gerhard Rühm, a serialist composer who experimented with Constructivist procedures, such as the mathematical permutation of words, for the composition of poetry. During its most creative phase, 1952–58, the ‘Wiener Gruppe’ achieved a synthesis of the two divergent trends of post-war experimental art in Europe, Surrealism and Constructivism. Fluctuating between Artmann's Surrealist attitude and Rühm's Constructivist approach, the ‘Wiener Gruppe’ developed into the most diversified and innovative of the post-war experimental movements.

The ‘MOB art & tone ART’ Ensemble made its debut in 1967 and played a lively role in Austrian musical life during the five years of its existence. All three of the composers who directed the Ensemble were also professional instrumentalists—Zykan as pianist, Gruber as double-bass in the Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Schwertsik as hornist in the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Zykan and Gruber both appeared regularly with the Ensemble, whose other performing members were Volkcr Altmann (horn), Leonhard Wallisch (cello), Roland Altmann and Kurt Prihoda (percussion). The violinist Ernst Kovacic and the cellist Heinrich Schiff appeared with the Ensemble from time to time as guests.

In 1960, at the age of 17, Gruber wrote the first two pieces which he is still prepared to acknowledge: the Suite for 2 pianos, wind instruments, and percussion, and the Mass for mixed chorus, two trumpets, cor anglais, double bass and percussion. It is worth considering what that acknowledgement implies, for the works themselves clearly do not measure up to the high technical standards Gruber sets himself today, or even to those which he achieved in the Concerto for Orchestra sketched that same year.

When Heinz Karl Gruber was growing up, it was still the time of church choirs and village wind music, of languidly arpeggiated harmonics on the harp, and promethean glissandi from heaven-storming violinists, of brilliant major keys and oh-so-doleful minor ones, of generous godfathers and old-fashioned aunties, of dying elves, bread-and-dripping, and the tragedy of breaking voices.

I was afraid it would happen: after drafting only a page or two of the commissioned review, I see that I am already indulging in a kind of shadow-boxing, at the expense of the book and its author. The fact is that any thoughts I may have on the subject of music and politics find their natural expression in my own musical work. Putting them into words is, I discover, like trying to catch an eel with my bare hands: it tends to be somewhat cramping, and it does, of course, consume a great deal of time that would otherwise be spent on composition. If, nevertheless, I persevere, it is only because I am aware that the task may be of some use to me personally, in helping to clarify certain musical or aesthetic aims. But since the result cannot possibly be published as a review, I must ask myself whether observations and catchwords noted down for my own purposes are worth publishing at all, and whether in particular they have any point for readers who know nothing of my music. I am by no means sure of the answer. There is, however, one consolation. In the long run, a composer's pronouncements are relatively as insignificant as his creed or his party card. The only decisive factor is the music itself.

The twin banes of opera for children are the simply silly and the pretentiously sentimental: talking down to them and talking down to ourselves. In The Two Fiddlers, Maxwell Davies enthusiastically circumnavigates this Scylla and Charybdis, making a children's opera worth the effort that must be spent on it, and incidentally adding a footnote to the recent triumph of the Symphony.