Dissonant strains of ancestral music

Panufnik has just turned 30 and, tomorrow night, will hear the world premiere of one of the most important commissions she has received - the Westminster Mass, commissioned to celebrate the 75th birthday of Cardinal Basil Hume - which will be performed in Westminster Cathedral by the cathedral choir with the City of London Sinfonia.

Yet the young composer, who has commissions stacking up and is one of that rare breed who actually earns a living from being a full-time composer, didn't just come close to giving it all up. She actually jacked it in, lock, stock and barrel. And it hurt.

Whether it was in her DNA or her domestic environment, it was pretty clear from the word go that something musical was cooking in the life of the young daughter of the great man. She was, in the manner of relentlessly-pestering kids taken with a fancy, hounding her parents from the age of three to be allowed to learn to play musical instruments.

Not that she appeared interested in following an orthodox route to mastering an instrument. ''I'd start on an instrument, but never actually wanted to learn anyone else's music. I always wanted to improvise.

''Therefore it was a real battle to get me to learn to read music.'' With some judicious persuasion she was encouraged to learn so that, by 12, she could begin writing down the improvisations that streamed from her mind.

And while she was aware of what her father did for a living, at that tender age his significance meant little to the girl. And her father, in turn, was aware of what she was doing but didn't interfere. Not that he'd have had much of a chance.

''There was always a great freedom in the family. He was a fabulous father; I could go to him with compositions or boyfriend troubles. I'd show him my music from time to time, but, like any other child, any advice your parents give, you don't take, almost as a matter of principle.'' Which she regrets.

The career of the young incipient composer started well when she was appropriately directed at school, where a chamber requiem she wrote at 16 was performed in Chichester Cathedral. And with that first public performance of her music, her resolve was set.

''I'd never really been good, verbally, at communicating, but after that performance I realised that there was a huge emotional expression available to me through music.''

And direct emotional expression, with an unselfconscious heart-on-sleeve quality, is one of the strengths of her music, as Scottish listeners heard recently when her string quartet was given a stunning performance in Edinburgh by the Maggini Quartet.

''It's not a conscious style, it's just the way it comes out. Emotional? Hugely melodramatic, more like - I'm a real drama queen,'' she laughs.

But the smile turns dark as she recalls her experience at the Royal Academy in London. After her first exposure with the requiem, she'd composed with some determination: pieces for friends,

jingles for language tapes, exercise-type studies for harp. And

the school steered her towards

the Academy.

Reflecting on it now, she plays it down: ''The fact that my name was known caused a few difficulties.''

But clearly, at the time, it was more than that. ''Odd, stray remarks from fellow students and professors gave me a chip on my shoulder about nepotism. They were small things, but, at the age of 18, they got to me.''

One student virtually accused her of receiving favouritism, implying her music would always be looked at twice because of her name. A professor, on looking over her work, asked if her father had helped her. She was told that her music was ''naive'' which, she points out, she'd now take as a compliment.

''I didn't have the maturity to cope at the time. I didn't do well at college, gave up writing completely because I didn't think I was suited to the career, and took a job for three years as a television researcher.''

After a few years at the Beeb, there began what she calls ''a slow build-up'' of people starting to play her music; which led to a gradual return to writing; which, in turn, led to a meeting with her boss, Dennis Marks - then of the BBC, later of English National Opera - who advised her that she could compose or work in TV, but not both.

''I humphed for a year,'' said Panufnik. ''Then my dad got very ill and died. A couple of days before he died, we had an amazing conversation after which I chucked in the BBC job and decided to go for it.''

And she hasn't looked back in the seven years since then. She's written a lot of chamber music, music theatre and music for dance.

Currently she's working on major commissions: one for the Mark Baldwin Dance Company, which will receive a national tour, an opera for the Broomhill Opera Trust, a set of Polish Christmas Carol arrangements for choir and symphony orchestra, and numerous other works, currently under contractual negotiation, which she can't discuss. But first, there's the premiere of her Westminster Mass tomorrow night.

Her research for that took Panufnik - herself a practising Catholic - into a convent for a retreat (though she confesses that that was as much to get away from the phone and the endless admin as to seek inspiration).

The resultant mass she describes as ''both devotional and celebratory''. One of the psalm texts she has set within the mass was specifically chosen by Cardinal Hume. It's in English, not Latin (also by request).

And while it is designed for orchestra and specialist choir, Panufnik hopes it will be singable enough to be approached by other choirs. And she is contemplating expanding it to incorporate elements for the congregation.

She was commissioned by John Studzinski's Foundation (which supports young artists, playwrights and composers) and the performance is designed to raise funds for Westminster Cathedral's Music Foundation (to which the composer is donating a proportion of her income from the work).

Then it's straight back to the study to plough into her other commissions, which have rapidly approaching deadlines. She imposes a strict regime on herself to meet these commitments: composing in the morning, administration in the afternoon, aerobics classes three times a week (''vital because of my sedentary job'') and a strict sleeping routine.

And she is supported by ''an army'' of agents. lawyers and publishers. ''You daren't get complacent, though I'm not a worrier. Obviously, financially it would be a horrific worry if I didn't have commissions, though I have a teaching skill.'' (She spends a considerable amount of time working with young children.)

''But at the moment - touch wood - I am able to live off composition.''