I owe Andrew Clements big time. He wrote so positively about my music early in my career and the last article he wrote was singling out my opera Festen for special praise. He did seem to go off me a bit in mid career but he was such a serious and thoughtful critic that I often agreed with him. I got to know him very well in the late 90s as he was the partner of the librettist and translator Amanda Holden. He had such a broad knowledge of music and a great enthusiasm for new music which he wrote and spoke about with such warmth and humour. We spent many evenings in Highbury talking about Stravinsky, politics and Arsenal football club – he cared about the most important things in life. Mark-Anthony Turnage, composer

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Andrew was perhaps the most remarkable critical voice of our age, and his writing embodied knowledge, curiosity and integrity. His tastes were open and adventurous, with a rare awareness of – and enthusiasm for – the newest musical developments from way beyond our shores. This isn’t the easiest time for contemporary music in the UK; Clements’ passing is a huge loss and he will be deeply missed.

I’d like to add a more personal note – except that, beyond bumping into Andrew periodically at concerts over the last 45 years, I barely knew him. The strict professional distance he maintained throughout his career impressed me all the more. But I might add that he wrote the very first newspaper review my work received anywhere, something for which I’ll always remain grateful. George Benjamin, composer

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Andrew Clements was an outstandingly honest and perceptive critic. I much appreciated his support as well as his criticism. I read his words with interest and admiration for over 30 years. I will miss him. Steve Reich, composer

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Ce que l’on attend idéalement de la part d’une personne écrivant sur la musique et les musiciens est un jugement clair, une véritable indépendance et une force de caractère. Andrew Clements avait tout celà, plus une insatiable curiosité. Quel privilège d’avoir pu lire pendant plus d’un quart de siècle le point de vue d’un observateur si passionné et courageux!

(What one expects ideally from anybody writing on music is clarity of judgment, true independence, and strength of character. Andrew Clements possessed all these qualities, along with an insatiable curiosity. What a privilege it has been to have been able to read for over a quarter of a century the insights of such an enthusiastic and courageous observer!) Pierre-Laurent Aimard, pianist

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For many of us, since our first forays into classical music, Andrew’s words have always been there: illuminating our path, inclining our ear. I will dearly miss his reassuring presence, his deft articulation, and trusted insight. So much of his writing remains online to inform and inspire us – and to entice us, when writing about music ourselves, to find such precision, grace and eloquence of our own. James Murphy, chief executive, Royal Philharmonic Society

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Andrew Clements was a regular and much-loved member of the audience here at Wigmore Hall. Sometimes when I encountered him before a concert, I was left disconcerted because he gave a very firm impression that he didn’t want to be here, but often, by the end of the evening, he was ecstatic, and this was reflected in his reviews. He was an outstanding critical voice, with the deepest possible knowledge and love of music. He was hugely respected, and he will be greatly missed. John Gilhooly, director, Wigmore Hall

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I was very fond of Andrew. I particularly enjoyed his deeply irreverent wit and insights, not just into music new or otherwise, but the people involved in the music world. His knowledge of music was vast. I can remember his partner, Amanda Holden, telling me how he could remember everything that he’d ever heard. Total recall. It was impossible to second guess what he was going to like or otherwise. His thoughts around pieces seemed to come from some deeply personal, off-kilter place as regards what meant anything to him at all. His writing was often thought-provoking and I certainly didn’t necessarily agree with his opinions, however it was always food for thought and would make me rethink my possibly entrenched thinking about certain composers. Simon Holt, composer

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When Ted Greenfield retired, I asked Alfred Brendel what sort of critic we should seek to hire. “Someone who understands modern music,” said Brendel in a flash. Though he himself tended not to stray too much from the late 18th and early 19th-century masterpieces, he thought the job of a critic was to understand, explain and judge the music of our times. Did he have any suggestions, I asked. “Try Andrew Clements,” he replied.

I tried; he joined. He was everything Brendel could have wanted. Many years later, I told Andrew the story of how he came to be recruited. He was both shocked ... and a bit thoughtful. He had, he confessed, sometimes been a bit harsh on Brendel. He had not known that the subject of his criticism had been one of his great admirers. But I suspect, even if he had known, it wouldn’t have changed a thing. Alan Rusbridger, Guardian editor-in-chief, 1995–2015

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It is with deep sadness that I receive the news of Andrew Clements’ passing. I am grateful for his immense contribution to music and for the consistently generous and attentive words he devoted to my work from the very beginning. His judgment and integrity leave an absence that is hard to put into words. Francisco Coll, composer

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Andrew was a great critic and a wonderful colleague, always ready with a cutting comment or a barbed witticism in the corners of otherwise not-so-memorable concerts. It’s easy to forget, but alongside his encyclopedic knowledge and enthusiasm, as a writer he was a superb stylist. Across thousands of reviews, Andrew never wrote an ugly sentence: his thoughts were lucid and sharp-edged, and he had a gift for writing in a direct, well-shaped way especially about the most complex of contemporary music.

Having worked alongside him very happily as a writer on other papers, I had then to be ready for Andrew in a different mode when I went to Radio 3 and the Proms. His comments and judgments were always sharp, never (hardly ever) unfair. While he sympathised with what we were trying to do in broadening the Proms repertory, he always argued we weren’t doing enough for contemporary music. Eventually I was stung into writing to remind him that even William Glock did not do as much new music at the Proms as we did; he took it all in good part. He kept us on our toes, and he will be sorely missed. Nicholas Kenyon, writer and broadcaster

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He will be sadly missed. Andrew’s knowledge of classical music across different disciplines combined with clear and refined writing narrative made him a major force in critical opinion over many years. He stuck to a critical response to what was in front of him and rarely strained into political and personal attacks, yet he was a respected, and at times feared, critic who didn’t pull his punches. His deep knowledge of contemporary music and his nose for a well thought out and ambitious production on the operatic stage gave him real stature in a critical world of diminishing returns where performing arts journalism has become subdued. John Berry, director, producer, artistic director ENO, 2005-2015

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I am deeply saddened to learn of Andrew Clements’ passing. I was fortunate that he took an interest in my music theatre works over the years, often traveling to cover premieres across Europe. I found his reviews were always analytical, intelligent, and fair – written with the kind of deep musical knowledge that made his opinion genuinely matter to me. Michel van der Aa, composer

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Andrew reviewed every year of my decade at Cheltenham music festival, and I always appreciated that, because getting critics to review out of London has become harder over time (the column inches available, the finances of trips out of town). I came to realise that there was a particular reason he was keeping the faith with Cheltenham – he mentioned that he was brought up nearby [in Gloucester] and had fond memories of attending in his youth, and hearing lots of new music. He knew that I was facing ever-stronger headwinds there by the time I was programming Cheltenham, and he always expressed his appreciation that I was doing my damnedest to keep the new music flag flying. That support, from someone I admired so much, was motivating and much appreciated.

Needless to say, any longstanding fondness for the festival didn’t ever soften up his reviews there. If he didn’t like something, there was the same commendable objectivity and clarity. Meurig Bowen, chief executive & artistic director, Britten Sinfonia, and artistic director of the Cheltenham music festival, 2007-17

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Artist egos are not merely fragile; they are ravenous. They feed on affirmation, recoil from scrutiny, and cry at the first sensation of disapproval. Most critics know this and exploit it. Andrew Clements did something far more dangerous: he paid attention.

Yes, Andrew wrote generous reviews. But generosity was never his defining trait. Courage was. He attended the unruly, the excessive, the wilfully difficult programmes – the ones that frightened his peers into polite absence. Where others retreated into safe abstraction, Andrew advanced. He stayed. He endured complexity.

And then he did the unfashionable work of comprehension. He refused the shortcut of reduction. Instead, he learned the internal grammar of the work, deciphered its syntax, traced its private logic. Reading his criticism felt less like evaluation than intrusion – an elegant trespass into the architecture of my thinking.

In an era intoxicated by immediacy, where language is flattened, accelerated, and emptied of consequence, Andrew resisted. He chose exactitude over noise. His sentences were calibrated, his metaphors unsparing. He deployed words that sent me back to dictionaries, to etymologies, to the slow labour of meaning.

Through this rigour, he created something rare: a zone of intellectual hospitality. A place where artists were neither indulged nor dismissed, but taken seriously enough to be challenged. He made criticism porous, reciprocal, alive.

I will miss the severity of his attention. I will miss the precision of his seeing. I will miss the way his writing revealed what I had not yet articulated, and occasionally what I had not dared to know.

Andrew Clements reminded us that criticism, when practised with discipline and courage, is not parasitic. It is generative. It does not consume art – it sharpens it. For those of us with fragile, ravenous egos, this was not comfort. It was nourishment. Tamara Stefanovich, pianist

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Andrew Clements occupied an all-too-rare place in classical music criticism. His deep and genuine engagement with the new made his reviews so much more vital than mere descriptions of what had been performed, as if it were a passage of play at the cricket. They placed even brand-new works into a larger, informed context. He took the role so seriously that his comments were always constructively insightful, for composers young and old, even his more harsh assessments. He will be sorely missed. Brett Dean, composer

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I read Andrew Clements keenly from the early 1980s onwards. His trenchant reviews were alarmingly well informed, always perspicacious and never provincial. He was the first UK critic to spot the genius of Gérard Grisey, the French spectral composer whose music has been so influential in the past 35 years. As early as August 1984 and again in September 1985, he acclaimed Grisey as a major new force in music at a time when almost nobody else here showed any interest.

In general, Andrew supported the more adventurous: Xenakis, Lachenmann, Saariaho, Carter and Ferneyhough were all championed, though not without a critical edge: Andrew was never easily pleased. Minimalists such as Glass, Pärt and Adams fared less well generally, though he had some interest in the Adams operas.

In 1993 he suddenly telephoned me having read some of my articles, to invite me on to the reviewing staff of the Guardian where he wanted, as he put it, “to train up someone new.” Unknown to him I was just starting out as a composer: trying to be both composer and critic would, I felt, put me in an impossibly conflicted position. He understood but warned “composing’s a lottery: you’ll find it easier to have a steady job as a critic.” Alas, many music critics were to have just as tough a time over the next 30 years as many composers. Julian Anderson, composer

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Andrew’s unique values and judgment, and insistence on standards of quality and independence from the industries of power and clique in the classical – those principles are what it’s all about, along with his soupçon of cantankerousness and a delight in joyfully scurrilous gossip – who else could be grumpy at a premiere or a new production with a twinkle in their eye?

There are those countless composers and new pieces whose work and importance he advocated and debated, to which he gave the seriousness of genuine criticism, and inspired all of us reading to explore, to resonate with what he said, or to argue passionately with it. The musical world isn’t the same: what a loss. Tom Service, broadcaster and writer

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Andrew Clements had a long-range perspective of music and held it up to the highest of standards. He cared deeply and his reviews were always fascinating. Even if he once described my sax concerto Iris as a mess, he wrote some wonderful things about my own music. I greatly appreciated his writing and will miss seeing him around, like a beacon of belief – within the rush of modern life – in the wonder that is contemporary classical music. Tansy Davies, composer

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Maybe flautists are quick to smile! For a number of years, I’d seen Andrew in his critic’s seat at Birmingham Contemporary Music Group concerts. I’d always admired his writing and regarded his presence as a strong endorsement. He had reviewed my music and I was therefore wary of approaching him. When I eventually decided to break the ice, it was with a joke. We both laughed. He was serious and readily amused. We shall miss him for his wisdom and sensibility. Howard Skempton, composer

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Like all natural-born writers, Andrew had a difficult relationship with deadlines, but his writing was so good that it was always worth the wait. In his early days, contributing to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, he even invented the genre of “leaky pillar box copy”, blaming the postal service for the non arrival of an article. Both he and I knew that when he telephoned for a chat it was often deadline-avoidance behaviour. In the foyers at performance intervals, he rightly kept his views to himself, but in our regular phone chats (usually a few times a week) Andrew would gossip freely or come up with shrewd musical insights. Not just musical insights: Andrew was something of a renaissance man, with wide interests, making him a valued colleague and friend. John Allison, editor of Opera with Opera News

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Andrew was a devoted champion of composers and those dedicated to commissioning, performing and recording their music; invigorating readers through his illuminating, razor-sharp writing to seek out the richness of music: the new, the unexpected, the known, the discoveries. He was, above all, a treasured spirit, one of the rare ones who understood how vital music is for the human soul. Jackie Newbould, creative producer, formerly executive producer, BCMG

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Andrew covered so many of BCMG’s concerts. To see him there meant to me, as artistic director, that I must be doing my job well. His presence was an encouragement, an endorsement. I would avidly await his reviews, he had such insightful things to say. On the rare occasions he mentioned the concert programme as a whole, as being deftly constructed for example, I would puff up with pride. Latterly, he and I would talk birds, a shared passion. On this, as with music, he was vastly more knowledgable than me. Andrew’s was a hugely important critical voice, and he was a sustaining pillar of the contemporary music culture. With his passing, as with that of his favourite composers such as Olly Knussen and Harry Birtwistle, it feels as if a particular realm of that culture has ebbed away. Stephen Newbould, former artistic director, BCMG

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Andrew was a quiet, sometimes withdrawn, always thoughtful colleague: it was always a pleasure to coincide with him at a concert. I was (and still am!) a regular visitor to Iceland and, knowing his passion for bird-watching, I recommended he go to the Lake Mývatn area in the north, to seek out the rare Barrow’s goldeneye duck. He did! And loved the birdlife there! Hilary Finch, retired music critic, the Times

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Andrew Clements was important to the London Sinfonietta and to what we stand for through his profound belief that new music matters and deserves serious public engagement and debate. We awaited his reviews with a mixture of anticipation and apprehension – encouraged by his praise, frustrated by his criticisms – and did not always agree with his conclusions, which could be blunt. Yet his criticism was clearly grounded in a passion and enthusiasm for surprising breadth of musical styles. His death gives pause not only for his life and those close to him, but for the passing of a particular time and voice. Andrew Burke, CEO and artistic director, London Sinfonietta

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After I was in Venice the other year, I spotted Andrew Clements’ review in the Guardian. So I dropped him a line, one anorak to another (anorak: a person who has a very strong interest, perhaps obsessive, in niche subjects). “I was really pleased to be there”, he said, “and very glad I made the effort.” Of course he made the effort; it was a work that fascinated him, something, like so much else, he cared about deeply. John Woolrich, composer

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Andrew really cared about festivals. As a relatively young festival organiser in the late 80s, I was slightly frightened and certainly in awe of music critics who, at the time, were the only people to have the power to praise or criticise so publicly. Their positive words were key to success.

I first plucked up courage to talk to Andrew when I had to hand him a copy of a score, about to be performed at Spitalfields festival. I soon realised he was completely human, and as I read more of his reviews, I appreciated his immense knowledge of an extremely broad repertoire. Most Fridays I have tried to read his CD reviews in the Guardian – he knew exactly how to cherrypick just one from a huge pile of releases.

Our paths crossed on frequent occasions over the decades, he always had time to smile or speak very briefly. However, on one occasion, when I sought his advice on a festival matter, he ensured we could have a long conversation, away from the concert hall. As I anticipated, his advice was invaluable. Judith Serota, executive director Spitalfields festival, 1988-2007

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Before birding apps were a thing, a call to Andrew would bring an instant and comprehensive answer to any query. Yes, definitely a sparrowhawk standing sentinel, and likely a female, whose Exocet missile flight away from its perch was then exactly as he predicted. The wonder of swifts was discussed every May through to August, seeing them and – more so in recent times – not seeing them, the continuing decline in numbers a great sadness to him.

Most often, phone conversations would focus on pianists, dislikes or likes, among the latter Martha Argerich, Bruce Liu and particularly Radu Lupu, for whom I’d once turned pages in a recital early in his career and, in sitting right there next to him, had learned so much. Reading Andrew’s penultimate CD review of previously unheard Lupu recordings, I sensed a valedictory tone which, of course, couldn’t be touched on. Instead, much quizzing of Lupu’s preference for a chair rather than a piano stool and Andrew’s laughing admission that, yes, dammit, Lupu did actually lean back rather than being hunched over the keyboard, as he’d written. His concern had been to capture the intensity of his approach. Lupu playing Schubert’s last sonata D960 will, for me, be a lasting reminder of the affinity Andrew instinctively felt for a musician of such profound commitment. Rian Evans, music critic, the Guardian

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I’m so very sad to hear of Andrew’s death. Post CD release or premiere, there was nothing quite like the suspense of wondering if the Great Andrew Clements would pen a few words about your latest offering. I’d expected my first CD to be little more than a deluxe drinks coaster, and was flabbergasted when Andrew wrote some lovely things about it. If words wore out, those sentences would be utterly threadbare, the use I’ve got out of them: proudly displayed at the top of every funding application I’ve ever done, his seal of approval has advanced my career, tangibly. Many of us composers liked to opine that, while a good review from Andrew was a badge of honour, a bad write-up was something to be even more proud of: I myself became particularly convinced of this after he labelled a big new piece of mine “almost hackneyed”! Rest in peace, Andrew: your opinions (particularly the flattering ones!) will be greatly missed. Cheryl Frances-Hoad, composer