Its impact can be heard today in works far removed from the knotty scores of composers like Milton Babbitt, Pierre Boulez, Charles Wuorinen and its other formidable practitioners during its heyday in the third quarter of the last century.
This approach worked especially well in knotty scores like the Schoenberg; Mahler's Third Symphony, an early highlight of Mr. Gilbert's season; and, most recently, the "Missa Solemnis," a mystical masterpiece that needs the help of a clarifying performance lest it sound convoluted.
In "Calculus and Politics," a trio and a quartet negotiate a knotty Harry Partch score; in "Dreaming Awake," a soloist and a duo independently scroll through three phrase variations.
"They put that picture up there like we're supposed to -- know -- him!" Through operatic singing, a knotty jazz score, dialogue and video, "Three Willies" uses the Horton affair to get at the larger issue of racial profiling.
The second was by Martins, River of Light, with a knotty, interesting score by a New York modernist, Charles Wuorinen.
Cinderella's Eyes perhaps doesn't contain anything as unashamedly brilliant as some of the best Girls Aloud singles – it's too knotty and encumbered with score settling for that – but it does prove, once and for all, that it's the quiet ones you need to keep an eye on.
But there is a fundamental disconnect between the often peppy, presentational pop score and the knotty darkness of the crisis being considered.
James Phillips' script – delivered, like Heather Fenoughty's eerie score, via headphones – is knotty and thoughtful, as it explores the responsibilities we have to the planet and to each other, the dangers of fundamentalism in many forms, and what we mean by society and justice.
The approachably knotty melodies of his busier tunes, scored for saxophone and vibraphone, occasionally suggested the smarter products of 1980s fusion (in particular, the band Steps Ahead, also led by a vibraphonist).
The lead dancers, Ellen Green and Amar Ramasar, sailed through Balanchine's knotty but ebullient "Danses Concertantes," set to a Stravinsky score and staged by Susan Pilarre.
