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On a strictly technical musical level, Goehr's endeavour has long been that of unifying the [[contrapuntal]] rigour and motivic workings of the [[First Viennese School]] and [[Second Viennese School]] with a strong sense of harmonic pacing and sonority. It is indicative that Goehr should go to Paris not only to attend the classes of Messiaen at the [[Paris Conservatoire]], but also to study [[counterpoint]] and serialism with Schoenberg scholar and composer [[Max Deutsch]]; even more indicative is the anecdote that Deutsch threw Goehr out of his house upon hearing that the young man intended to study with Messiaen as well as with him. Goehr's indebtedness to Messiaen is very strong, as is apparent in Goehr's lifelong commitment to modality as an integration to both serialism and to tonality, as well as his often bird-song inspired [[melodic]] writing, particularly in the cantata ''Sing, Ariel''.{{Original research|date=August 2021}}
=== Engagement with the past ===
Goehr's interest in the musical past is far from an empty mannerism or a sign of musical conservatism, but rather an earnest, and constantly renewed exploration of his own musical roots. The music of the past does not hinder, in Goehr's view, the search for an innovative musical language:
<blockquote>In the composer's mind, vague memories fuse and grow into a new, conscious, creative idea. An artist is related to the tradition from which he comes, and this bond has little to do with time or progress.{{sfn|Goehr|1998|p=21}}</blockquote>
This attitude is concisely expressed by Goehr's striking assertion that "all art is new and all art is conservative".{{sfn|Goehr|1998|p=21}} Understood in this way, his musical imagination of the past can be traced to three fundamental sources:
==== Walter Goehr ====
Although Goehr's personal relationship to his father was not unproblematic, Walter Goehr had a determining influence on his son via his work as a conductor: the composers whose work Walter championed—Arnold Schoenberg, Claudio Monteverdi, Modest Mussorgsky, Olivier Messiaen—feature as a red-thread throughout Alexander's output. For instance, Goehr's ''Arianna'' uses the libretto of a lost opera by Monteverdi, ''Arianna abbandonata'', and conjures up sonorities reminiscent of the Italian Renaissance. The quintet ''Five Objects Darkly'' (whose title is borrowed from a work by the painter [[Giorgio Morandi]] is a set of variations based on a musical fragment by Mussorgsky,{{sfn|Williams|2001}} and the earlier Little Symphony uses the chordal structure of Mussorgsky's Catacombs from ''Pictures at an Exhibition'' as a harmonic backbone.{{sfn|Goehr|1998|pp=291–292}}
==== Early twentieth-century modernist composers ====
[[Walter Goehr]] had studied with Schoenberg and was constantly surrounded by high calibre composers such as [[Seiber]], Tippett, and others. Goehr's strong sense of debt to this generation, particularly to Schoenberg, had a lot to do with his ambivalent reaction to the [[Darmstadt School]] avant-garde of the fifties<ref>Cf. 'I was originally attracted to serialism [...] But even as a student I felt a number of reservations. I couldn't share [Boulez's] attitude towards Webern [...]. Having been brought up in a very Schoenbergian household I preferred to see [[Webern]]'s achievement as an extension of [[Arnold Schoenberg|Schoenberg]]'s ideals.'.{{sfn|Goehr|1998}} (in which his friend and mentor Pierre Boulez was heavily involved).
==== Music of the baroque and classical tradition ====
Goehr's interest in these musics is surely part of his Schoenbergian heritage. Just like Schoenberg, Goehr refuses to view current [[Musical composition|composition]] as a practice that is independent of any musical tradition, but rather, he seeks in tradition the elements for the innovation of musical language. Alexander's search for a means of controlling structure and [[harmony]] in music led him in the late seventies to an innovating interpretation of the late [[baroque music|baroque]] practice of figured bass in conjunction with his personal blend of modality and serialism. This is exemplified in his setting of ''Psalm IV'' and the ensuing correlated works: ''Fugue and Romanza on the notes of the fourth Psalm'' (1976 and 1977, respectively). Goehr was also committed to the reinvention of [[classical period of music|classical]] forms such as the [[Symphony]], the classical Concerto, and the Baroque suite (from his Suite Op. 11 of 1961 right up to ''Symmetry Disorders Reach'' of 2007). Further sources of inspiration are the treatises on [[musical ornamentation]] by [[Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach]], and Monteverdi, whose synthesis of [[renaissance music|renaissance]] [[polyphony]] with the early baroque move towards [[homophony]] and the control of harmony clearly mirrors Goehr's own commitment to a harmonically expressive serialist practice.
=== Recordings ===
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