'Jonathan Harvey remains one of contemporary music's most fascinating and fearless explorers. His musical quest, strikingly consistent over five decades of composing, is shaped by a vision, integrity and honesty of purpose that endure amid the changing tides of musical fashion. Michael Downes' beautifully written and insightful study reminds us that, in Harvey's work, music has not lost its capacity to chart the edges of human experience.'Julian Johnson, Professor of Music, Royal Holloway University, UK 'This is an informed study that benefits from interviews with Jonathan Harvey and access to compositional materials. Also taking account of other commentaries on Harvey's music it offers an authoritative and balanced perspective, and gives the reader a strong context helpfully positioning the two works chosen for detailed examination. Michael Downes's lucid discussion goes some way to explain why Harvey's concern with philosophical and intellectual ideas has made him a composer more esteemed in Europe than in the UK. Certainly issues of transcendent spirituality and their musical expression are not simple matters to discuss. But Downes does not seek to reduce the paradoxical aspects of Harvey's musical thought, but rather explains it all in ways that preserves the inherent intricacies of the underlying ideas.

And despite the complex compositional processes in Song Offerings and White as Jasmine, the clarity of Downes's explanations (well supported by music examples) and his avoidance of technical jargon for the sake of it, goes to ensure that the non specialist will also be able to follow and to draw much from his discussion.'David Wright, Reader in the Social History of Music, Royal College of Music, UK '.one of Harvey's singular achievements is to make what "should" be uneasy seem engaging and even joyous. And Michael Downes's text [.] is able to convey this quality with notable authority.' Tempo 'The principal aim of Downes's book is to provide an analytical guide to two of Harvey's works. [this] allow[s] the non-specialist reader to enter into Harvey's spiritualist aesthetic, from which vantage point the music is more likely to make sense. But it is Downes's secondary purpose, to provide an outline of Harvey's musical style and artistic aims, that is most successful.

The close focus on the two works lends credibility and insight to the other chapters. readers will soon find themselves better listeners, both to Harvey and to music in general.' Times Literary Supplement.