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Tristram Cary; Composer acclaimed as the father of electronic music whose output ranged from concert pieces to Doctor Who

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Hyfler/Rosner

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Apr 25, 2008, 10:57:30 PM4/25/08
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Tristram Cary


Last Updated: 1:22am BST 26/04/2008
Daily Telegraph


Tristram Cary, the composer who died on Wednesday aged
82, was a leading exponent of electronic music, producing
concert works and scores for films and television, including
several episodes of Doctor Who.

Although Cary discovered that his output filled no
fewer than 76 CDs, he was disappointed to be largely
unrecognised in his native England, perhaps because he had
emigrated to Australia in midlife.

In a global context, however, Cary was acknowledged as
the father of electronic music.

Having experimented with sound and tape manipulation
while working as a naval radar engineer during the Second
World War, in the 1950s Cary created one of the first
electronic music studios and worked on scores for such films
as the classic Ealing comedy The Ladykillers (1955),
Hammer's Quatermass and the Pit (1967) and a three-part
Disney adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper (1962).

In Doctor Who Cary scored incidental music for several
memorable episodes, including the first to introduce the
Daleks in December 1963, and others such as "Marco Polo"
(1964), "The Daleks' Master Plan" (1966) and "The Mutants"
(1972).

He also provided scores for television dramas such as
Jane Eyre (1963) and Madame Bovary (1964).

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Before emigrating to Australia in 1972 Cary was
commissioned by the Olivetti company to write a piece using
the noises of their office equipment.

The result was his Divertimento for 16 singers, jazz
drummer and Olivetti machines, which was performed live at
the opening of the firm's new training centre in Surrey,
with Cary himself conducting in front of a VIP audience that
included the violinist Yehudi Menuhin. The text of the work
comprised cardinal numbers sung in four languages.

Another innovative piece, his extended cantata Peccata
mundi (for which he wrote his own libretto) was introduced
at the 1972 Cheltenham Festival. It called for the
conventional forces of chorus and orchestra, but with the
addition of a speaking voice and four tape tracks.

Although Cary composed for traditional instruments and
ensembles, his abiding interest lay in electronic music,
which he wrote for concert performance in most of the
accepted genres: synthetic, musique concrčte (or a mixture
of both), mixed works for live performers and electronic
sounds.

As a founder director of Electronic Music Studios
(EMS), he helped to design the VCS3 portable synthesiser,
which Pink Floyd used on their 1973 concept album The Dark
Side Of The Moon.

While visiting Australia to demonstrate the
synthesiser to music lecturers, Cary was offered a one-year
contract as visiting composer at Adelaide University. In the
event, he remained there for 12 years as senior lecturer
until his retirement in 1986.

Tristram Ogilvie Cary was born on May 14 1925 in
Oxford, the third son of the novelist Joyce Cary and his
wife Gertrude. Educated at Westminster, he was a King's
scholar and a friend of both Michael Flanders and Donald
Swann, who introduced him to the music of Stravinsky.

Tristram won an exhibition to Christ Church, Oxford,
but after two terms his Science studies were interrupted by
the Second World War, and he served in the Royal Navy
between 1943 and 1946.

Specialising in radar - he had been a radio enthusiast
in his teens - he received training in electronics and
grasped the potential of new technology from Germany that
enabled sound to be recorded on magnetic tape; on his
demobilisation in late 1946 he returned to Oxford, changed
his degree course to PPE and immediately began experimenting
with tape recorders.

He realised that, as well as being a way of
reproducing sound, tape could be the source of an altogether
new type of music.

After graduating Cary enrolled at the Trinity College
of Music, studying composition, piano, horn, viola and
conducting, and taught at evening classes to augment his
student grant.

During the early 1950s Cary began to write and teach
music and took a part-time job in a gramophone shop selling
expensive hi-fi while developing his first electronic music
studio.

By 1954 he was able to earn a full-time living writing
music for radio, films and the emerging medium of
television, as well as composing numerous concert works.

In an early experiment in the field of environmental
sound, Cary provided a sound-environment for the different
sections of the British pavilion at Expo '67 in Montreal.

In the same year he founded the electronic music
studio at the Royal College of Music, the first of its kind
in Britain, and designed and built another for himself,
which he transported from London to his house in Suffolk and
subsequently to Australia, where it was incorporated into
the expanding teaching studio at Adelaide University.

Returning to freelance composition, Cary drew on the
university's studio and his own at home to generate music
across the spectrum, from film scores to concert pieces.

In the mid-1990s there were performances of his work
to mark his 70th birthday, and a new suite based on his
music for the film The Ladykillers won The Gramophone
magazine's award for best film music CD in 1998.

Cary also wrote on concerts and opera for The
Australian, and in 2005 received the Adelaide Critics'
Circle lifetime achievement award. Adelaide University
honoured him with a Music doctorate in 2001.

A citizen of both Britain and Australia, in 1991 Cary
was awarded the medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for
services to Australian music. He also broadcast regularly.

Tristram Cary married, in 1961 (dissolved 1980), Dorse
Dukes. He married secondly, in 2003, Jane Delin.

Both wives survive him with the two sons and daughter
of his first marriage.

ZapRat

unread,
Apr 26, 2008, 12:25:23 AM4/26/08
to
Hyfler/Rosner wrote:

> In a global context, however, Cary was acknowledged as
> the father of electronic music.

Oh really?

I'll not quibble for I certainly don't profess enough expertise on the
topic, but, the following may disprove (or at least
lay question to) the statement above:

[excerpted paragraphs follow]


Edgard Varèse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgard_Var%C3%A8se

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/ff/Edgard_Varese.gif/220px-Edgard_Varese.gif
[Joaquin Phoenix is a shoe-in for similarity!]

Occupation(s) Composer
Years active 1906–1961

Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse (December 22, 1883 – November 6,
1965) was an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part
of his career in the United States.

Varèse's music features an emphasis on timbre and rhythm. He was the
inventor of the term "organized sound", a phrase meaning that certain
timbres and rhythms can be grouped together, sublimating into a whole
new definition of sound. His use of new instruments and electronic
resources led to his being known as the "Father of Electronic Music"
while Henry Miller described him as "The stratospheric Colossus of Sound".

-------------------------

Honorable mention:

Luigi Russolo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Russolo

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Luigi_Russolo_ca._1916.gif
[Check that scholarly gaze! Frank Zappa's good-looking uncle, perchance?]

Luigi Russolo (April 30, 1885 - February 4, 1947) was an Italian
Futurist painter and composer, and the author of the manifestoes The Art
of Noises (1913) and Musica Futurista.

Russolo moved to Milan in 1901, frequenting the Brera Academy, and took
part to the restoration of Leonardo's Last Supper in Santa Maria delle
Grazie. In his first works Russolo applied the divisionist techniques to
a fantastic-symbolic view of subject related to the city or the
industrial society.

An adherent of the Futurism movement, he worked closely with futurist
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.

On 11 March 1913 he published the treatise The Art of Noises (L'arte dei
rumori). He is considered the first theorist of electronic music.
Russolo invented and built instruments including intonarumori
("intoners" or "noise machines"), to create "noises" for performance.
Unfortunately, none of his original intonarumori survived World War II.
Luigi's brother Antonio Russolo also composed futurist music.

To honor the memory of the futurist composer, The Russolo-Pratella
Foundation of Varese, Italy holds an annual international composition
competition for electro-acoustic music. The Luigi Russolo Prize in
Electro-Acoustic Music is one of the most prestigious awards in the
field of electro-acoustic music.

--------------------

And, the following are not to be overlooked:

Pierre Schaeffer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Schaeffer

Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer (August 14, 1910–August 19, 1995) was a
French composer, noted as the inventor of musique concrète.

In 1949, Schaeffer met Pierre Henry. In 1951, he founded the Groupe de
Recherche de Musique Concrète (GRMC) in the French Radio Institution.
This gave him a new studio, which included a tape recorder. This was a
significant development for Schaeffer, who previously had to work with
turntables to produce music. Schaeffer is generally acknowledged as
being the first composer to make music using magnetic tape. His
continued experimentation led him to publish A la recherche d'une
musique concrète (The Search for a Concrete Music) in 1952, which was a
summation of his working methods up to that point.

----------------

Pierre Henry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Henry

Pierre Henry (born December 9, 1927 in Paris, France) is a French
composer, considered a pioneer of the musique concrète genre of
electronic music.

Between 1949 and 1958, Henry worked at the Club d'Essai studio at RTF,
founded by Pierre Schaeffer. During this period, he wrote the 1950 piece
Symphonie pour un homme seul, in cooperation with Schaeffer; he also
composed the first musique concrète to appear in a commercial film, the
1952 short film Astrologie ou le miroir de la vie. Henry has scored
numerous additional films and ballets. Among Henry's best known works is
the experimental 1967 album Messe pour le temps présent, one of several
cooperations with choreographer Maurice Béjart featuring the popular
track "Psyché Rock."

Perhaps one of Henry's most well-known influences on contemporary
popular culture is to the theme song of the TV series Futurama. The tune
is inspired by Henry's 1967 song "Psyché Rock."

In 1997, Fatboy Slim issued a remix of "Psyché Rock."

--------------------

Max Mathews
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Mathews

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/78/Mathews84Violin.PNG
Max Mathews playing and sampling the violin connected to an IBM 704 computer

Max Vernon Mathews (* November 13, 1926, in Columbus, Nebraska) is a
pioneer in the world of computer music. He studied electrical
engineering at the California Institute of Technology and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, receiving a Sc.D. in 1954.
Working at Bell Labs, Mathews wrote MUSIC, the first widely-used program
for sound generation, in 1957. For the rest of the century, he continued
as a leader in digital audio research, synthesis, and human-computer
interaction as it pertains to music performance.

Although he was not the first to generate sound with a computer (an
Australian CSIRAC computer played tunes as early as 1951),[1] Mathews
fathered generations of digital music tools. He describes his work in
parental terms in this excerpt from "Horizons in Computer Music," March
8-9, 1997, Indiana University:

"Computer performance of music was born in 1957 when an IBM 704 in NYC
played a 17 second composition on the Music I program which I wrote. The
timbres and notes were not inspiring, but the technical breakthrough is
still reverberating. Music I led me to Music II through V. A host of
others wrote Music 10, Music 360, Music 15, CSound, Cmix. Many exciting
pieces are now performed digitally. The IBM 704 and its siblings were
strictly studio machines--they were far too slow to synthesize music in
real-time. Chowning's FM algorithms and the advent of fast, inexpensive,
digital chips made real-time possible, and equally important, made it
affordable."

-------------------

See also:

The Qwartz Music Awards 2008
http://www.awdioblog.com/?p=46


--
As of the day this message is being posted there are, lacking an
unanticipated alternate outcome, 270 days remaining in the imperial
presidency of George W. Bush

ZapRat

unread,
Apr 26, 2008, 1:09:40 AM4/26/08
to
Hyfler/Rosner wrote:

> Tristram Cary
> Last Updated: 1:22am BST 26/04/2008
> Daily Telegraph


Since there was no address provided for the article's location online,
and Google seemingly doesn't index or link to "Daily Telegraph" news
content, it took me a considerable amount of searching to find the
following data which accompanies the article at its point of origination:


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/26/db2601.xml

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2008/04/26/db2601.jpg
Tristram Cary: created one of the first electronic music studios

-----------------------------

From his official website at - http://users.senet.com.au/~trisc/Music.html

HEAR MY MUSIC


Here are some extracts from my works .

You will probably need a recent version of RealPlayer which can be
downloaded free.

Click the links to hear the pieces. They will be downloaded to
your hard disc. Be patient!

I will be changing the samples from time to time.


The Impossible Piano (Concert - Computer Music, 1994)
Set of short pieces,a tribute to Conlon Nancarrow. Full version on
Soundings, Tall Poppies Records TP139.


Narcissus for flute and two tape recorders (1968)
Passage near start. Premiere by Edward Walker at Queen Elizabeth
hall, London, 1969. this BBC recording by Douglas Whittaker, 1972.
Full version on Soundings , Tall Poppies Records TP139.


Scenes from a Life (Concert - Orchestral, 2000)
Excerpt from near the beginning. Premiere performance, September
2000, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra conducted by Graham Abbott.
Commissioned by Symphony Australia.


Dr Who and The Mutants (TV - Electronic, 1972)
Part of the music from Episode 1. BBC production with Jon Pertwee
as Dr. Who, Katy Manning as Jo.


The Ladykillers (Film Orchestra, 1955)
Robbery music, taken from the 1996 suite performed by Royal Ballet
Sinfonia, cond. Kenneth Alwyn. From The Ladykillers - Music from Those
Glorious Ealing Films ,Silva Screen FilmCD177. Gramophone Award 1998.

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