Most art tells us something about the time and place in which it was created and judging by the amazing collection of musical masterpieces that composers were working on exactly a century ago, the hundredth anniversary of 1911 is well worth celebrating. But though the quantity and quality of these works is unquestionable, it is above all their variety that I think is so fascinating. What sort of time could simultaneously inspire music as thrilling as Stravinsky's Petrushka, as ambitious as Schönberg's Gurrelieder, as subtle as Webern's Five Pieces for Orchestra, as nostalgic as Elgar's Second Symphony, as sensitive as Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe, as decadent as Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier, as disturbing as Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle, as sensuous as Debussy's Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien, as brooding as Sibelius' Fourth Symphony, or as profound as Mahler's Tenth? And that's not to mention pieces by the likes of Nielsen, Janáček, Vaughan-Williams, Berg, Scriabin, Rachmaninov, and Ives.

1911 was not only a year of musical achievement. There was plenty of ambition and adventure in other fields too. Physicist Ernest Rutherford deduced the existence of a compact atomic nucleus from scattering experiments; Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovered the phenomena of superconductivity; an aircraft landed safely on a ship for the first time; and Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first person to reach the South Pole. People saw new paintings by Chagall, Mondrian, Kandinsky, Matisse, and Picasso, and read original novels such as The Secret Garden, and Ethan Frome, along with writings by HG Wells, DH Lawrence, EM Forster, GK Chesterson, Joseph Conrad, George Bernard Shaw, and Beatrix Potter.

In Europe, the mounting political pressures of the day caused an intensity that many reacted to creatively. Great artists have always sensed the mood of their time and an increasingly stressful international situation was understood by several composers as a time bomb that would not take long to implode. Of course, how they all responded to it differed dramatically. Sibelius and Mahler took a dark and truthful approach. Elgar and Strauss harked back nostalgically, mourning the loss of a more innocent way of life, whilst Schönberg, Berg, and Webern chose instead to look uncompromisingly forward. Stravinsky and Scriabin glorified in the pure opulence of musical colour, whereas Ravel and Debussy sought refuge in a more intimate musical perfection. Though Janáček and Bartók tapped into the flavours of patriotic folksong, both must have been outraged and appalled by the horrific bloodshed that extreme nationalism was about to cause.

Music mirrors the soul of the period and culture in which it is written. But masterpieces also deal with timeless truths as relevant now as when they were first composed. A hundred years on from 1911, with open-ended military campaigns, uncertain economic futures, changing climates, and profound ideological misunderstandings, one could argue that there is a similar tension around the world today. Let's hope that these less than straightforward times can produce a similar outpouring of wonderful creativity to that which flowered so extraordinarily one hundred years ago.

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