Anton Webern was once asked about his colleagues Arnold Schonberg and Alban Berg. “Ah, the old masters,” was his pithy reply. I thought of this comment often at the Merkin Concert Hall on Monday evening as Speculum Musicae offered a charmingly nostalgic evening of pieces from the new-music scene’s distant past.

Speculum Musicae is an oxymoronically venerable contemporary ensemble that has been around since 1971. Only two of its members – pianist Aleck Karis and percussionist Daniel Druckman – were on hand for this concert, but they engaged three dedicated sidemen to help with the presentation. These were performances of fine musicality and intense sincerity.

Louis Andriessen’s “Hout” from 1991 hasn’t been performed here in New York for an entire week, not since the chamber ensemble of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra presented it at Carnegie Hall last Sunday. Mr. Andriessen is a figure from the 1970s who has continued to offer his brand of minimalism with a difference.Where many of the Glass-Reich school can be mind-numbingly dull, Mr. Andriessen, although repetitive, is al ways exciting and brash.

Oren Faber, electric guitar, and Lino Gomez, tenor saxophone, joined the duo from Speculum for a striking performance. The rhythmic figures in the marimba were magnified and modified by the two guests while the piano provided needed grounding.

Harrison Birtwistle wrote “The Axe Manual” in 2000 for Emanuel Ax and Evelyn Glennie. Despite the clever title,the work is quite boring.Though Mr. Birtwistle is attempting to explore and update the rhythmic figures and compositional techniques of J.S. Bach or Rameau, the net effect is like reading a textbook. Various individual moments are interesting, but as a totality, it feels interminable.

Hughes Dufourt’s “L’ile sonnante” (1990), on the other hand, is a rare treat. For electric guitar and percussion, it reverses the standard instrumental roles quite engagingly. The percussionist plays the melody, a kaleidoscopic set of “tone rows” for various struck sounds, while the guitar provides rhythmic backup. Short, sweet, and inventive, this was the best playing of the night, even though they had to start anew when Mr. Druckman realized he had forgotten the weight that keeps the sustaining pedal depressed on his vibraphone.

I’m paraphrasing here, but Bertrand Russell once said mathematics exists for people who like to teach mathematics to people who like to teach mathematics. Contemporary composition is a lot like that. There were less than 50 people in attendance for this recital, and more than half of them were composers and their significant others.

The most interesting among them was Lukas Foss, who now, rather surrealistically, looks much like Aaron Copland. The spirit of Woodstock hovered over the final piece of the evening as the ensemble performed his 1969 classic, “Paradigm.” This piece takes some of its conceit from Mr. Foss’s “Time Cycle,” one of the most enduring pieces of the second half of the last century.

With a nod to the aleatoric,which was so fashionable at the time, the piece is scored for electric guitar and percussion and whatever other instruments the musicians agree upon. In addition to the tenor saxophone and piano, the players chose violinist David Fulmer to participate. Mr. Druckman, the leader, guided partly by example and partly by shouting, whispering, crying, and hectoring into his wireless microphone. Listeners unfamiliar with this type of high-minded experimentation could recognize the same sort of individual note dynamics popular in rock recordings of the 1960s, particularly those of Jimi Hendrix .

Too bad I forgot to pick up my bellbottoms at the cleaners.