Contents: Introduction: new music and the modernist legacy, Björn Heile; Part I New Music , Social Debates and the Aesthetics of Critical Modernism: Modernism's moment of plenitude, Andrew Timms; Fields of rubble: on the poetics of music after the post modern, John Croft; Spectralism, politics and the post-industrial imagination, Eric Drott; The scream in avant-garde music: the new left and the rediscovery of the body, Beate Kutschke; Verbal discourse as aesthetic arbitrator in contemporary music, Ian Pace; Weltmusik and the globalization of new music, Björn Heile. Part II Aspects of Compositional Poetics: Temps perdu: Aldo Clementi and the eclipse of music as praxis, David Osmond-Smith; Feldman – Beckett – Johns: patterning, memory and subjectivity, Catherine Laws; Brian Fernyhough, 'postmodern modernist', Lois Fitch; The electroacoustic music of Henri Pousseur and the 'open' form, John Dack; Self-portrait with Boulez and Machaut (and Ligeti is there as well): Harrison Birtwistles's Hoquetus Petrus, Mark Delaere; Local polymetric structures in Elliott Carters 90+ for Piano (1994), Ève Poudrier; Select bibliography; Index.