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Howard Skempton (born October 31, 1947) is a British composer and accordionist. Events 445 BC – Ezra reads the Book of the Law to the Israelites in Jerusalem (see Nehemiah 91 NLTse Year 1947 ( MCMXLVII) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full 1947 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located A composer (literally meaning 'one who puts together' is a person who creates Music, usually in the medium of notation, for Interpretation and Performance The accordion is a portable box-shaped Musical instrument of the hand-held Bellows -driven free-reed aerophone family sometimes referred to as a Squeezebox Since the late 1960s, when he helped organize the Scratch Orchestra, he has been associated with the English school of experimental music. The Scratch Orchestra was an experimental Musical ensemble founded in the spring of 1969 by Cornelius Cardew, Michael Parsons and Howard Skempton's work is characterized by stripped down, essentials-only choice of materials, absence of formal development and a strong emphasis on melody; his music has been described as "the emancipation of the consonance" by musicologist Hermann-Christoph Müller. The emancipation of the dissonance was a concept or goal put forth by Arnold Schoenberg (composer of Atonal music and the inventor of the Twelve tone technique [1]

Contents

Life

Howard Skempton was born in Chester and studied at Ealing Technical College. Chester is the County town of Cheshire, England. Lying on the River Dee, close to the border with Wales, it is home to 77040 Thames Valley University ( TVU) is a British university based on campuses in Slough, Reading and Ealing, all in the [2] He started composing before 1967; that year he moved to London and began taking private lessons in composition under Cornelius Cardew. London ( ˈlʌndən is the capital and largest urban area in the United Kingdom. Cornelius Cardew ( May 7, 1936 – London, December 13, 1981) was an English Avant-garde Composer, In 1968 Skempton joined Cardew's experimental music class at Morley College, where in spring 1969 Cardew, Skempton and composer Michael Parsons organized the Scratch Orchestra. Morley College is an Adult education college in London, England. Michael Edward Parsons (born December 12, 1938) is a British Composer. The Scratch Orchestra was an experimental Musical ensemble founded in the spring of 1969 by Cornelius Cardew, Michael Parsons and Howard This ensemble had open membership and was dedicated to performing experimental contemporary music by composers such as La Monte Young, John Cage, Terry Riley, as well as by members of the orchestra itself. La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14 1935) is an American Composer and musician WikipediaWikiProject Composers#Lead section --> John Milton Cage Jr Terry Riley (born June 24 1935) is an American composer associated with the minimalist school One of Skempton's early works, Drum No. 1 (1969), became one of the "most useful and satisfying" pieces in the repertory of the Scratch Orchestra. [3]

Through Scratch Orchestra Skempton met numerous composers and performers, including Christopher Hobbs, John White and various Systems artists, and pianist John Tilbury. Christopher Hobbs (September 1950 – Hillingdon, nr London is an English experimental Composer, best known as a pioneer of British John White (born in Berlin, 5 April 1936) is an English Composer and musical performer Systems music is a type of Minimalist music particular to British Experimental music, in which 'the note-to-note procedure' is determined numerically (as defined by John Tilbury (born 1936 is a British Pianist. He is considered one of the foremost interpreters of Morton Feldman 's music and since 1980 has been a member However, tensions arose during the politicizing of the Scratch Orchestra in early 1970s: Cardew and a number of other important members were pushing the ensemble towards a Marxist direction. Marxism is the political philosophy and practice derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Skempton, along with Hobbs, Parsons, White and many others, refused to be associated with the political line; the breakup of the Orchestra was accompanied by, in Parson's words, "a split between its 'political' and 'experimental' factions. "[4]

Skempton has been working as a music editor, performer (of his own compositions, on piano and accordion) and teacher since 1971. [2] In 1974 he and Michael Parsons formed a duo to perform their own works. [4] The 1980s saw an increase of interest in Skempton's music, which led to more commissions and permitted him to compose more for larger forces. [5] Lento, an orchestral work composed in late 1991, became one of Skempton's most recognized and widely known pieces. Lento is a composition for orchestra written by Howard Skempton in 1990 In the 1990s important recordings of his works started appearing, such as a disc of piano music recorded by old friend and Scratch Orchestra colleague John Tilbury, released on Sony Classical in 1996,[6] and Surface Tension, a recording of miscellaneous works released on Mode Records. Sony BMG Masterworks is a Record label. It is the result of a "restructuring" of Sony BMG Music Entertainment 's classical music division Mode Records is an American Record label based in New York City New York, whose primary focus is modern classical, avant-garde, and [7]

Howard Skempton currently teaches composition at the Birmingham Conservatoire. Birmingham Conservatoire is an international conservatoire. Prior to 1989 it was known as the Birmingham School of Music [8] Recently, Skempton was the winner of the Chamber Scale Composition category at the 2005 Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards for his string quartet Tendrils (2004). A string quartet is a Musical ensemble of four String instruments &mdash usually two Violins a Viola and Cello &mdash or a piece [9]

Works

See also: List of compositions by Howard Skempton

Skempton's style is characterized by a concentration on the quality of sound and an economy of means,[10] absence of development in the conventional sense, and concentration on sonority. This is a list of compositions by British composer Howard Skempton. [2] Many pieces are also quite short, lasting no longer than one or two minutes. [11] Although the compositional methods are clearly experimental (involving, for example, aleatory), there is a marked emphasis on the melody in many pieces,[2] and already some of the earlier piano works (Saltaire Melody (1977), Trace (1980)) quickly became favorites of the public. Aleatoric music (also aleatory music or chance music; from the Latin word alea, meaning " Dice " is Music [6]

Formative influences on Skempton's music included Erik Satie, John Cage and Morton Feldman. Alfred Éric Leslie Satie ( Honfleur, 17 May 1866 – Paris, 1 July 1925) was a French Composer and WikipediaWikiProject Composers#Lead section --> John Milton Cage Jr Morton Feldman (January 12 1926 – September 3 1987 was an American Composer, born in New York City. [2] For example, A Humming Song (1967), an early piano piece composed before Skempton started lessons with Cardew, is a miniature with static, gentle sound. The harmonic structure consists of eight symmetrically arranged pitches, out of which six are selected for use in the piece. Chance procedures are then used to determine the order and number of occurrences of individual pitches. Aleatoric music (also aleatory music or chance music; from the Latin word alea, meaning " Dice " is Music The pianist is asked to sustain certain pitches by humming. [12] Another early piece, Drum No. 1 (1969), composed for the Scratch Orchestra, consists of just a few written instructions to the performers and is clearly inspired by similarly realized works by La Monte Young, whose music Cardew was enthusiastically propagating in the late 1960s. The Scratch Orchestra was an experimental Musical ensemble founded in the spring of 1969 by Cornelius Cardew, Michael Parsons and Howard La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14 1935) is an American Composer and musician The 1960s decade refers to the years from the beginning of 1960 to the end of 1969 [13] The score of May Pole (1971), a piece for orchestra, consists of a chance determined sequence of chords. Each performer chooses a note from a chord, and chooses the moment when to play that note; the later, the softer the dynamics. [14] Skempton later called such pieces "landscapes" that "simply project the material as sound, without momentum. "[15] Other early works include two pieces for tape, a medium Skempton rarely used later: Indian Summer (1969) and Drum No. 3 (1971).

The early 1970s saw a slow shift from static, abstract pieces to ones with a more clearly defined rhythmic and harmonic structure, although the methods and forms Skempton used remained unorthodox. For instance, in a series of Quavers piano pieces (1973–75) the music consists solely of repeated chords with no pauses between them. In addition to "landscapes", two other categories appeared, dubbed "melodies" and "chorales" by the composer. The "melodies" are single melodic lines either with simple accompaniment (Saltaire Melody, for piano (1977)) or suspended in space (later works such as Trace for piano (1980) and Bagatelle for flute (1985)). "Chorales" are works where material is presented primarily (or solely) using chords. An example is Postlude (1978), for piano, in contradistinction to Eirenicon 3 (1978), also for piano, which is a "landscape". [16] The earlier "melodies" were apparently composed at the instrument, intuitively, whereas the later ones evolve from a series of written pitches. [17]

It was also in the 1970s that Skempton started composing chamber works, although these were almost always for two performers, since they were written to be performed by the duo of Skempton himself and Michael Parsons. These pieces included a number of horn duos, pieces for two drums, and a duet for piano and woodblocks. This article is about the Musical instrument. See Woodblock for other meanings of the term Finally, in 1970s Skempton started playing accordion and composing for this instrument.

In 1980 Skempton composed Chorales, his first major work for orchestra. It was commissioned by the Merseyside Youth Orchestra. The composer described it as "essentially the same as what I was doing before, but on an orchestral scale". [18] Although the work is clearly a "chorale" in the sense Postlude and similar pieces are, during the 1980s Skempton's range expanded greatly, leading to works such as The Durham Strike (1985), which is a set of piano variations that is longer than any of the previous piano pieces, Images (1989), a large cycle of piano works for a TV documentary, and chamber works scored for larger forces than those used previously. Images is a cycle of piano pieces composed by Howard Skempton in 1989

Skempton's first major success came in 1991 after the premiere of Lento (1990), an orchestral piece that gained a larger audience for the composer. Lento is a composition for orchestra written by Howard Skempton in 1990 [2] During the 1990s and the 2000s Skempton started composing longer works for larger forces. These include several concertos, among which are those for instruments rarely used in the Western tradition: the hurdy-gurdy (Concerto for hurdy-gurdy and percussion (1994)) and the accordion (Concerto for oboe, accordion and strings (1997)). A hurdy gurdy (also known as a wheel fiddle) is a stringed Musical instrument in which the strings are sounded by means of a Rosined wheel which the strings Some of the later works explore non-standard instrumentation: Horizons (2001) is scored for oboe and harp, Ballade (1997) is a pieces for saxophone quartet and string orchestra. "Hautbois" redirects here for the strawberry variety see Hautbois strawberry. The harp is a Stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicular to the soundboard. [19]

References and further reading

Notes

  1. ^ Müller 1998.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Potter, Grove.
  3. ^ Parsons 1980, 13.
  4. ^ a b Michael Parsons. Note to Piece For Cello and Accordion. From LMJ 11 CD COMPANION, Not Necessarily "English Music" Contributors' Notes.
  5. ^ Parsons 1987, 16.
  6. ^ a b MacDonald 1996.
  7. ^ Howard Skempton: Surface Tension
  8. ^ Birmingham Conservatoire: Staff: Composition
  9. ^ 2005 RPS Music Awards Winners
  10. ^ Parsons 1980, 12.
  11. ^ Hill 1984, 8.
  12. ^ Parsons1980, 12.
  13. ^ Parsons1980, 13.
  14. ^ Score and instructions reproduced in Pace 1997, 9.
  15. ^ Parsons 1987, 21.
  16. ^ Parsons 1987, 21.
  17. ^ An email interview with Howard Skempton conducted by Malcolm Atkins between November 2002 and February 2003
  18. ^ Parsons 1987, 19.
  19. ^ Oxford University Press: Howard Skempton - Catalogue of works

External links

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