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Then there are the ones filed under 'groove' which are straightforwardly tuneful, like Tomeka Reid's Spy Ringtone, where the cello imitates a funky bass guitar. Or not so straightforwardly tuneful, like David Lang's Feelings, which dances around a repeating harmonic sequence in 7/8 time. The Pulitzer prize-winning composer Shulamit Ran enjoyed composing her first ring-tone so much she wrote 12 more. Best of them is chorale-chorale, which circles round a few harmonies in a way which is predictable and surprising at once.

Some of Ran's pieces misfire because they're too effortful and earnest, which is also a drawback with Bernard Rands' Pronto. Nico Muhly's Slow Cycle (which he describes as "a rainy morning, a lazy morning") has a different problem. It's in his wanly pastoral, Copland-smeared-while-the-ink-was-still-wet mode. On a tinny iPhone speaker, fighting against the noise of an office or a street, it would barely register. These pieces point to a fundamental divide in the collection. There are those by composers who remembered their music has a practical job to do, i.e. alert the listener to a call or message, on a device with a lousy speaker. And there those who forgot that requirement, or ignored it.

Composers in this second group haven't composed Mobile Miniatures. They've composed straightforward miniatures, which isn't at all the same thing. Their model isn't the ring-tone, it's the modernist tradition of blazingly intense micro-pieces, which began with Anton Webern just before the First World War, and continues now with composers like György Kurtág. Pieces of this sort need the calm and silence of a concert hall to be appreciated. Amidst the hurly-burly of a commuter train or an office or a busy street, they simply won't register.

It's a natural mistake. At one time composers didn't mind serving a social function. Mozart thought it no shame to write marches to march to, or minuets to dance to. They're musically interesting, but not at the expense of being a proper march or a minuet. Nowadays composers aren't comfortable with serving any master but their Muse. However, it's heartening to observe that some composers among this collection, especially younger ones, manage to pull off Mozart's trick. Mason Bates's Spektral Specter Remix actually sounds like a ring-tone, and is also interesting to listen to. Katherine Young's Boom is even more striking, a brazen A minor shout on the upper strings, with a electronically flavoured plunge on the cello. Most startling of all is trombonist George Lewis's Obbligato, a coiled spring of pure energy. These all press the right button ("Answer me NOW!"). Whether they'll also lead to friendship and romance is more dubious, but if they only change the atmosphere on a train for a second or two, that's miracle enough.

Download the Mobile Miniatures at www.spektralquartet.com

REVIEW: Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Royal Festival Hall