Season’s reading: I Sing of a Maiden
Carol Rumens: Set to unforgettable music by Benjamin Britten, this strangely erotic Nativity is even better on the page
… Alex Ross
Paul Morley readies himself for a gladiatorial clash of the critics with New Yorker music writer Alex Ross
Adamo: Little Women – review
Mark Adamo's 1998 adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women will prove too sentimental for some tastes, but you can't fault the performances, writes Tim Ashley
James Tyler obituary
A masterly lutenist, he led the revival of the early guitar
Malmesbury bids to become UK’s first ‘philosophy town’
Think carefully if you are considering heading to this corner of Wiltshire – the market town that gave us philosopher Thomas Hobbes is aiming to become Britain's capital of thought
Digested opera: Janáček’s The Makropulos Case
The enigmatic diva at the heart of this bizarre tale takes an age to reveal her true identity. Don't worry, though: John Crace is on the 100-year-old case
Geoffrey Burgon obituary
Composer of television and film scores for Brideshead Revisited and Monty Python, as well as many concert and stage works
What to see in the arts this autumn
There's a double helping of the Dane, Wall Street returns, Wallace and Gromit take up presenting – and Robyn goes for broke. Our critics pick this autumn's hottest shows
Icarus at the Edge of Time
Royal Festival Hall, LondonBrian Greene's narrative in Icarus at the Edge of Time is neat, with the scientific points well made, and the film images mix fantasy with some realism. Yet it never gels as a concert piece, writes Andrew Clements
Magic numbers: composers and their clandestine codes
Tom Service: Following in the footsteps of Plato and his Pythagorean undertones, composers have, over the centuries, used their own codes for the cognoscenti to decipher
The other Where the Wild Things Are
Tom Service: The fuss over Spike Jonze's film forgets that there was an even more ambitious version of the children's book - an opera
HC Robbins Landon provided a passport to Mozart’s world
Tom Service: The scholar's in-depth investigations into Mozart revealed the composer to a mass audience - even though he actually preferred Haydn
Reinhard Mohn obituary
Obituary: Self-effacing German businessman who made Bertelsmann a media colossus
Le Grand Macabre by György Ligeti
Piet: Right from the start - I'm pissed as a fart. Amanda and Amando reply: Our love is long lasting - Straight from central casting
A life in music: Claudio Abbado
To mark the death of the great conductor, here's a piece from 2009 in which he talks to Tom Service about his life and work