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The Electronic Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2010

Hugh Davies
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Extract

Gerhard was not only the first important British composer to adopt electronic music techniques; it seems probable that he was, by a few months, the creator of the first British score to involve tape. From 1954 to 1959 his electronic music consisted of nearly a dozen works of incidental music for theatre, radio, and film, initially to provide special effects as an extension of the possibilities of a chamber ensemble—such as piano sounds played backwards (e.g. in the radio play A Leak in the Universe, 1955). By 1958 he had assembled sufficient equipment to make up a very small studio, apparently little more than a couple of tape recorders, at his home in Cambridge. It remained very small until his death in 1970.

Type
Research Article
Information
Tempo , Issue 139 , December 1981 , pp. 35 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

1 Unless otherwise indicated, all Gerhard's own statements, given in inverted commas, are taken from private letters to the author, 1964. and 1967.

2 ‘Concrete and Electronic Sound-Composition’ in Music, Libraries and Instruments, Hinrichsen's Eleventh Music Book (Hinrichsen, 1961)Google Scholar.

3 ‘Sound Observed'. Two-part radio talk, BBC, 1964.

4 The Contemporary Musical Situation. The Score and I.M.A. Magazine No. 16, 06 1956 Google Scholar.