Millennial prelude -- Taking steps : 1900-1918. The meanings of Modernism ; Fauré ; Puccini ; Elgar and Delius ; Debussy ; Satie ; Ravel ; Debussy analysis ; Mahler ; Sibelius ; Richard Strauss ; Ives ; Rakhmaninov ; Skryabin ; Stravinsky ; Schoenberg ; Bartók ; Berg and Webern ; Webern analysis ; Busoni -- Symphonic music after 1918. Nielsen ; Sibelius ; Vaughan Williams ; Roussel, Ravel -- Opera. The background ; Richard Strauss ; Analysis : Capriccio ; Busoni and Weill ; Janáček ; Ravel, Szymanowski ; Prokofiev ; Britten -- Béla Bartók. 1915-1927 ; Analysis : String quartet no. 3 ; Bartók after 1927 -- Igor Stravinsky : 1913-1951. New paths? ; New techniques ; Analysis : Oedipus Rex and Symphony in C ; Stravinsky in the 1940s -- Symphonic music. Preliminaries ; The early Hindemith ; String quartet no. 3. ; Hindemith after the Third string quartet ; Prokofiev ; Analysis : Prokofiev's Symphonies nos. 5 and 6 ; Shostakovich ; Analysis : Shostakovich's Symphony no. 10 ; Other symphonists -- Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg in transition ; Schoenberg's twelve-note practice ; Twelve-note music and the voice ; Schoenberg in America ; Analysis : String quartet no. 4 (Largo) ; Late works ; The Schoenberg debate -- Alban Berg. Wozzeck ; Chamber concerto ; Lyric suite ; Der wein ; Lulu ; Violin concerto -- Anton Webern. The path to twelve-note music ; Twelve-note mastery ; Analysis : String quartet op. 28 ; Webern after op. 28 -- The spread of serialism. Stravinsky ; Sessions ; Gerhard ; Dallapiccola ; Babbitt -- Three individualists. Tippett ; Messiaen ; Carter -- Radicals and rituals. Carmina mundana ; Varèse ; A context for John Cage ; Cage ; The forceful and the passive : Nancarrow, Feldman -- Musics of change : seven Europeans. Lutosławski ; Xenakis ; Ligeti ; Berio ; Boulez ; Henze ; Stockhausen -- The minimalist experiment. Young and Riley ; Reich ; Glass ; Adams ; The sacred and the simple ; Andriessen and others -- Laments and consolations. Bernd Alois Zimmermann ; Symphonists ; Takemitsu ; Silvestrov, Schnittke ; Kurtág ; Nono -- Polarities, pluralities. Lachenmann ; Scelsi ; Donatoni, Kagel ; Maxwell Davies ; Birtwistle ; Ferneyhough ; Murail, Lindberg ; An end-of-century mainstream? ; The musicologist speaks -- .