It is also characterized, in contrast to the music of the immediate post–World War II serialists, by the frequent reliance of its composers on poetic conceptions, very often implied in the titles of individual works and work-cycles.
The origin of the name New Complexity is uncertain; amongst the candidates suggested for having coined it are the composer Nigel Osborne, the Belgian musicologist Harry Halbreich, and the British-Australian musicologist Richard Toop, who gave currency to the concept of a movement with his article "Four Facets of the New Complexity";[2] Toop's article emphasizes the individuality of four composers (Richard Barrett, Chris Dench, James Dillon, and Michael Finnissy), both in terms of their working methods and the sound of their compositions, and demonstrates that they did not constitute a unified "school of thought".
According to Richard Toop, the rhythm for the oboe part in the first song is almost totally determined by a strict system with five stages of complexity, each governed by its own cycle of numbers.
By 1997, the composers associated with the New Complexity had become an international and geographically disjunctive movement, spread across North America, Europe, and Australia, many of them with little connection to the Darmstadt courses, and with considerable divergence amongst themselves in styles and techniques.
The international nature of its programming is clear from a large number of composers invited from North America; these included Ignacio Baca-Lobera from Mexico and Aaron Cassidy, Franklin Cox, Chris Mercer, Steven Takasugi, and Mark Osborn from the United States.