British experimental composers
Robert Davidson
Hi,
Any fellow fans of John White, Chris Hobbs, Michael Parsons, Dave Smith,
Howard Skempton, Laurence Crane, Cornelius Cardew and the like out there?
I wish more people knew about the wonderful music made by these unique
composers.
Any one know music by these composers and have comments?
Robert Davidson.
Christopher DeLaurenti
>Any fellow fans of John White, Chris Hobbs, Michael Parsons, Dave Smith,
>Howard Skempton, Laurence Crane, Cornelius Cardew and the like out there?
I am only familiar with Cardew via AMM and his famous comment about
failure in action.
Perhaps you might recommend titles of lps/cds for the adventurous
listener to seek out?
regards,
christopher
visit the 3 Camels for Orchestra homepage!
http://www.oz.net/~composer/
Robert Davidson
Christopher DeLaurenti wrote:
>
> >Any fellow fans of John White, Chris Hobbs, Michael Parsons, Dave Smith,
> >Howard Skempton, Laurence Crane, Cornelius Cardew and the like out there?
>
> I am only familiar with Cardew via AMM and his famous comment about
> failure in action.
>
> Perhaps you might recommend titles of lps/cds for the adventurous
> listener to seek out?
A very good place to start would be Brian Eno's mid-70s Obscure label,
which I believe is in the process of CD-ification. John White, Gavin
Bryars, Michael Nyman, John Adams, Chris Hobbs all made it onto these
wonderful records. These shouldn't be too difficult to find, and are
well worth having. I'm very much addicted to them.
Cheers,
Robert Davidson.
Brian Duguid
comp...@oz.net (Christopher DeLaurenti) wrote:
>>Any fellow fans of John White, Chris Hobbs, Michael Parsons, Dave Smith,
>>Howard Skempton, Laurence Crane, Cornelius Cardew and the like out there?
>
>I am only familiar with Cardew via AMM and his famous comment about
>failure in action.
>
>Perhaps you might recommend titles of lps/cds for the adventurous
>listener to seek out?
A particularly good place to start comes via the two CDs "Century XXI
- UK", on the Italian Robi Droli / New Tone label. UK distribution via
Impetus; you can check other details at their web site (linked from my
page below, don't have time to look it up right now). These feature
about a dozen composers from the UK's post-minimalist generation.
Brian Duguid B...@mm-croy.mottmac.com
http://www.hyperreal.com/zines/est/
http://www.hyperreal.com/~duguid/
http://www.esophagus.com/test-dept/
Manningtree High School
Robert Davidson wrote:
>
> Christopher DeLaurenti wrote:
> >
> > >Any fellow fans of John White, Chris Hobbs, Michael Parsons, Dave Smith,
> > >Howard Skempton, Laurence Crane, Cornelius Cardew and the like out there?
> >
> > I am only familiar with Cardew via AMM and his famous comment about
> > failure in action.
> >
> > Perhaps you might recommend titles of lps/cds for the adventurous
which is excellent. It includes early and recent works.
Its on Sony discs I think.
Jim
Robert Davidson
Manningtree High School wrote:
> There is a new(ish) recordiing of Piano Music by Skempton out
> which is excellent. It includes early and recent works.
> Its on Sony discs I think.
> Jim
Yes, it is Sony, and it's wonderful. A unique composer to whose music I
am thoroughly addicted. His music is published by Oxford University
Press.
Another Skempton disc is the popular orchestral work Lento, a CD single
on NMC which sold very well in the UK I believe.
Robert Davidson.
Alan Haselden
Christopher DeLaurenti wrote:
>
> >Any fellow fans of John White, Chris Hobbs, Michael Parsons, Dave Smith,
> >Howard Skempton, Laurence Crane, Cornelius Cardew and the like out there?
>
> I am only familiar with Cardew via AMM and his famous comment about
> failure in action.
>
> Perhaps you might recommend titles of lps/cds for the adventurous
> listener to seek out?
Haven't heard it, but there's a new compilation CD out by Cardew.
Contains material from 1959 to 1970 (or was it 1980?). There's
a review about it in the British music 'zine 'The Wire'.
I have two CDs with Cardew on: AMM's 'AMM Music' (their 1966 debut) &
Steve Reich's 'Drumming etc' on the DG label. Both are very good, but
Cardew is just one session musician of many on both of these!
cheers,
Alan H.
Mr M.R. Gibbs
Robert Davidson (s03...@student.uq.oz.au) wrote:
: Hi,
: Any fellow fans of John White, Chris Hobbs, Michael Parsons, Dave Smith,
: Howard Skempton, Laurence Crane, Cornelius Cardew and the like out there?
: I wish more people knew about the wonderful music made by these unique
: composers.
: Any one know music by these composers and have comments?
: Robert Davidson.
I can enthuse greatly about the music of Howard Skempton. I heard his Lento
in concert performed by the Liverpool Philharmonic. Amazing stuff, very pure,
radiantly simple tonal harmonies. The piece consists of one, slowly
progressing harmonic sequence with the orchestration variying throughout.
I have also herad some of John White's music, and was not greatly impressed.
Any opinions on James Dillon and other 'new complexity' music ?
Chris Koenigsberg
Also note that Cornelius Cardew was Karlheinz Stockhausen's assistant
for a while. During that time, around 1956-57, Cardew did much of the
orchestration (and maybe some of the actual composition) for
Stockhausen's "Carre for 4 Orchestras".
Cardew also translated Stockhausen's big long heavy article (Cardew
gave it the English title "...how time passes...") in 1957, for S.'s
"Die Reihe" electronic music journal. (I wrote a technical review of
the paper, the theory, and scientific responses to it, back in 1991,
which is on my Web pages at <http://www.pobox.com/~ckk/smmt.>).
And then, after Cardew went on his ridiculously stupid "Maoist"
Communist binge in the early 1970's, and renounced and burned all his
previous music, and only composed banal "worker's songs" from then on
till his death a couple of years later in a motorscooter accident,
Cardew also wrote a very silly book (though he was absolutely serious)
titled "Stockhausen Serves Imperialism". If you've heard the dull
formulaic propaganda music (with themes always workers as heroes) that
came out of China during the Cultural Revolution, well, that was what
Cardew aspired to, in this last weird deluded phase of his life. He
only wanted to compose songs that uneducated workers could sing. What
a tragic loss to the world.
Remember of course that just before his nutty Maoist binge, Cardew
founded the "Scratch Orchestra" and published the Scratch Music
notebooks, and Brian Eno and Gavin Bryars met each other there. Most
"experimental free improv music" that is not strictly descended from a
jazz scene got its start with Cardew's Scratch Orchestra (but the
Maoist Cardew unfortunately even renounced his previous Scratch
Orchestra as an imperialist capitalist ploy :-)
--------------------
Chris Koenigsberg: c...@pobox.com
<URL: http://www.pobox.com/~ckk>
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William Harrison
>Haven't heard it, but there's a new compilation CD out by Cardew.
>Contains material from 1959 to 1970 (or was it 1980?). There's
>a review about it in the British music 'zine 'The Wire'.
>
>Alan H
Alan -- could you please post more details of the Cardew CD...
Thanks,
Bill
ilaws...@aol.com
In article <328a73dc....@news.uwa.edu.au>, wt...@chem.uwa.edu.au
(William Harrison) writes:
I've got a CD of piano music by Cardew, performed by Andrew Ball & John
Tilbury, Andrew Bottrill, and Cardew himself. It came out in 1991 on a
very small independent label, and I don't think it's got a distributor -
so I don't think it's the disc mentioned above. Its number is BLCD011,
and the label is B&L records. If anyone is interested in getting a copy of
this disc send me a mail, and I should be able to find a contact address.
Ian Lawson
Brian Duguid
c...@pobox.com (Chris Koenigsberg) wrote:
>And then, after Cardew went on his ridiculously stupid "Maoist"
>Communist binge in the early 1970's, and renounced and burned all his
>previous music, and only composed banal "worker's songs" from then on
>till his death a couple of years later in a motorscooter accident,
>Cardew also wrote a very silly book (though he was absolutely serious)
>titled "Stockhausen Serves Imperialism".
The idea that Stockhausen's music ideologically serves the values of
the Western establishment classes wasn't confined to Cardew. Various
Fluxus types, including Tony Conrad, picketed Stockhausen's concerts
in the 60s. Are you suggesting that Stockhausen's embodiment of the
values of a technocratic elite doesn't merit criticism, Chris?
>If you've heard the dull
>formulaic propaganda music (with themes always workers as heroes) that
>came out of China during the Cultural Revolution, well, that was what
>Cardew aspired to, in this last weird deluded phase of his life. He
>only wanted to compose songs that uneducated workers could sing. What
>a tragic loss to the world.
For Cardew, politics became undoubtedly more important than music.
During this period, he perhaps spent more time engaged in political
activism than in composing music. And why not? Given that Cardew's
music had *always* had a very clear political content
(anti-authoritarian), his increasing involvement with people outside
the middle classes was inevitably going to make him question why he
was producing music that so few wanted to hear. Maybe other composers
who left their previous milieu behind would have similar reactions.
>Remember of course that just before his nutty Maoist binge, Cardew
>founded the "Scratch Orchestra" and published the Scratch Music
>notebooks, and Brian Eno and Gavin Bryars met each other there. Most
>"experimental free improv music" that is not strictly descended from a
>jazz scene got its start with Cardew's Scratch Orchestra (but the
>Maoist Cardew unfortunately even renounced his previous Scratch
>Orchestra as an imperialist capitalist ploy :-)
I don't think you can see the Scratch Orchestra in isolation from
contemporary free improv groups such as SME and AMM. Many of the
people who performed with the SO had a jazz background, including some
of Cardew's AMM pals.
Herb Levy
Chris Koenigsberg writes:
> Most
> "experimental free improv music" that is not strictly descended from a
> jazz scene got its start with Cardew's Scratch Orchestra (but the
> Maoist Cardew unfortunately even renounced his previous Scratch
> Orchestra as an imperialist capitalist ploy :-)
I'm not sure what YOU mean by a jazz scene, but much of the European free
improvised music, most of which isn't "jazzy," stems from the British
Spontaneous Music Ensemble, the German Workshop Freie Musik, and the Dutch
Instant Composers Pool, all of which were going concerns before Cardew
wrote the draft constitution of the Scratch Orchestra in May 1969.
I'm pretty sure that Bryars was already playing free with Derek Bailey &
Tony Oxley prior to this time, but I don't have ready access to a source
for that.
& don't forget the various works of Robert Ashley, Pauline Oliveros,
Christian Wolff & others from the mid-60s which were also at least sources
for, if they weren't themselves, non-jazz free improvisations.
Herb Levy
he...@eskimo.com
Colin Johnson
Hello!
: : Any one know music by these composers and have comments?
Hmm . . . the "problem" with a lot of the British experimentalists
music is that it is primarily "performer's music" rather than
music to listen to on records, et cetera. This applied especially
to Cornelius Cardew's music such as "the great learning". This is
all rather intentional, fitting in with some of the Marxist ideas
that were floating around at the time.
What I think is a great pity is that a lot of this music fits
into a tradition of performance which is largely being lost as the
people who were around at the time when all this was being created
have moved onto other things . . . there is a danger that all of this
music will become lost in time, as the performance practise becomes
lost and just the scores remain which aren't espcially informative
once the context is lost.
: I have also herad some of John White's music, and was not greatly impressed.
John White has written a lot of music, he seems to have a rather
"throwaway" attitude to music, writing pieces for particular
occasions. Again he's written stuff which is fun to perform
(have a look at things like "the conspicuous consumer" or "big
river") yet which can wear rather thin for an audience.
: Any opinions on James Dillon and other 'new complexity' music ?
A breif opinion : when "new complexity" is done well (like Brian
Ferneyhough's 4th string 4tet and a lot of Michael Finnissy's
music in that style) it can be a powerful way of using sound. On
the whole though, I find the term unhelpful---James Dillon has done
a lot of stuff which isn't "new complexity" at all (what's the
long set of songs he wrote "La vol de nuit" perhaps is the title---
that isn't new complexity at all and is wonderful) . . . I find it
hard to generalize . . . some of the new complexity stuff works and
is really funky, sometimes it falls flat . . . I wouldn't dare
attempt to _perform_ in any of it though!
Hmm . . .
Colin Johnson.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"La geometrie est l'art de bien raisonner sur les figures mal faites."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Colin G. Johnson, Phone : 0131 455 4631
Department of Mathematics, Fax : 0131 455 4232
Napier University, 219 Colinton Road, Email : col...@maths.napier.ac.uk
Edinburgh, EH14 1DJ, Scotland, U.K. http://www.maths.napier.ac.uk/~colinj
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
William Harrison
>The idea that Stockhausen's music ideologically serves the values of
>the Western establishment classes wasn't confined to Cardew. Various
>Fluxus types, including Tony Conrad, picketed Stockhausen's concerts
>in the 60s. Are you suggesting that Stockhausen's embodiment of the
>values of a technocratic elite doesn't merit criticism, Chris?
>
Not to mention the legendary non-performance of Stimmung at the
Holland festival ca. 1969 when radical Dutch composers insisted in
"joining in" with the performers on stage.
Bill
Jack Campin
c...@pobox.com (Chris Koenigsberg) writes:
> And then, after Cardew went on his ridiculously stupid "Maoist"
> Communist binge in the early 1970's, and renounced and burned all his
> previous music, and only composed banal "worker's songs" from then on
> till his death a couple of years later in a motorscooter accident,
Like "Boulavogue"?
Sheesh.
> He only wanted to compose songs that uneducated workers could sing.
(See above) no he didn't. But if he had, so what? Martin Luther did
exactly that, and are we the worse for it?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jack Campin ja...@purr.demon.co.uk
T/L, 2 Haddington Place, Edinburgh EH7 4AE, Scotland (+44) 131 556 5272
--------------------- Save Scunthorpe from Censorship ---------------------
Robert Davidson
Mr M.R. Gibbs wrote:
> I have also herad some of John White's music, and was not greatly impressed.
That's a pity. I love almost everything I've heard and played of his.
He has an enormous series of piano sonatas full of myriad levels of
"meta-irony" which I feel are sure to gain in recognition over the
ensuing decades, emerging from the scrapheap of disposed postmodern
culture.
>
> Any opinions on James Dillon and other 'new complexity' music ?
My respect for and enjoyment of this music grows daily, though I do
believe it is a movement with some definite reactionary elements (let's
get back to modernism sort of thing). The music can be exciting,
especially if it is composed by Dillon or Richard Barrett. My main
problem with this music is that I don't believe the enormous effort put
in by the performer is really worth it in the end. Good improvisation
along the lines of Tilbury, Cardew, Cecil Taylor, even Fred Frith, can
have similar results but with a lot more balls and life. A performer
reading off a score making this sort of music can be very clinical and
also reeks of the old authoritarian composer image Cage did so much to
dismantle (but which never really got through to the tradition of Boulez,
Stockhausen etc).
Anyone else think new complexity is old modernism? Paul Griffiths states
as much in the new edition of Modern Music in his discussion of
Ferneyhough, though he states this is an approving way. Musicologists
and critics do tend to be conservative.
In addition it's probably worth stating that it's perfectly possible to
love the music of Skempton, Glass, Adams, Del Tredici, Barrett and Branca
all at once as I do.
Robert Davidson.
mike_scott
Robert Davidson <s03...@student.uq.oz.au> wrote:
>Hi,
>Any fellow fans of John White, Chris Hobbs, Michael Parsons, Dave Smith,
>Howard Skempton, Laurence Crane, Cornelius Cardew and the like out there?
> I wish more people knew about the wonderful music made by these unique
>composers.
>Any one know music by these composers and have comments?
>Robert Davidson.
I'm a big fan of John White, Skempton, Cardew, and most of the Scratch
Orchestra people. Skempton and White in particular seem to have
mellowed in recent years, and I have enjoyed more or less everyting
I've heard. I've never been much taken with Michael Parson's or Dave
Smith's work (though there's a very good recording available of one of
Smith's piano pieces played by John Tilbury).
There was an excellent concert at the ICA a few weeks ago with new
works by both White and Skempton (who were also there to talk about
them), which was recorded for Radio 3's excellent 'Hear and Now'. H&N
also devoted a programme to John White about a year ago, which
included a long and very interesting interview.
A CD of John White's music -- 'Fashion Music (1990)' -- is now
deleted, I think, but shouldn't be too hard to get hold of, as is his
'Machine Music' w/Gavin Bryars (on Obscure). Also check out back
issues of 'Unknown Public'.
Mike Scott
john shiurba
> > Most
> > "experimental free improv music" that is not strictly descended from a
> > jazz scene got its start with Cardew's Scratch Orchestra (but the
> > Maoist Cardew unfortunately even renounced his previous Scratch
> > Orchestra as an imperialist capitalist ploy :-)
>
> I'm not sure what YOU mean by a jazz scene, but much of the European free
> improvised music, most of which isn't "jazzy," stems from the British
> Spontaneous Music Ensemble, the German Workshop Freie Musik, and the Dutch
> Instant Composers Pool, all of which were going concerns before Cardew
> wrote the draft constitution of the Scratch Orchestra in May 1969.
>
> I'm pretty sure that Bryars was already playing free with Derek Bailey &
> Tony Oxley prior to this time, but I don't have ready access to a source
> for that.
>
--
Matthew L Weber
On 15 Nov 1996, Jack Campin wrote:
>
> c...@pobox.com (Chris Koenigsberg) writes:
> > And then, after Cardew went on his ridiculously stupid "Maoist"
> > Communist binge in the early 1970's,
Or, as Glenn Watkins said, "became a walking billboard." :)
Matthew L. Weber