University of Huddersfield Repository Adkins, Monty, Duque, Carlos and Karman, Gregorio The electronic music of Roberto Gerhard Original Citation Adkins, Monty, Duque, Carlos and Karman, Gregorio (2012) The electronic music of Roberto Gerhard. In: International Computer Music Conference Proceedings. MPublishing, University of Michigan Library, Ann Arbor, MI, pp. 22-29. This version is available at http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/16242/ The University Repository is a digital collection of the research output of the University, available on Open Access. Copyright and Moral Rights for the items on this site are retained by the individual author and/or other copyright owners. 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SOURCES tapes as well as documenting the annotations on boxes and other materials found with the tapes to Centre for Research in New Music Whilst Schaeffer, Stockhausen and their respective produce a full catalogue of the archive. University of Huddersfield colleagues at the GRM and WDR studios propagated concert electronic music and produced siginficant For Gerhard’s electronic works, the magnetic tape collection at the Cambridge University Library is the theoretical output on their work and the new medium, Gerhard was a more practical composer. Gerhard’s primary source. Over half of the tapes in the ABSTRACT experiments were carried out in the public glare collection are directly related to Gerhard’s sound Gerhard’s approach to electronic music traversed the initially through composing incidental music (The compositions [9] – the rest comprising a considerable Roberto Gerhard was a pioneer of electronic aesthetic paradigms that polarized early musique Prisoner (1954), King Lear (1955) and Pericles number of recordings of his own instrumental works music in England creating over twenty substantial concrète and Elektronische Musik, often using (1958) being some of his earliest such works). and a library of music by his contemporaries concert, theatre and radio works from as early as instrumental, concrete and electronic sound (including Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Bartok, 1954. However, for various political, cultural and materials. Working very much on his own (the BBC One of the disadvantages of not working permanently Stockhausen and Nono). Excluding one remarkable personal reasons Gerhard’s electronic music has Radiophonic Workshop was not opened until 1958, in a major radio or state-funded studio meant that exception, the Symphony no.3 ‘Collages’ (1960) [10], not been published or widely disseminated. some four years after Gerhard has started working in there was no archival administrative structure to most of this work remains unpublished, and in a Gerhard’s electronic music is one of the richest the medium) he was critical of the mainstream avant- preserve Gerhard’s electronic works. Apart from the number of cases is not available from other sources. repositories for understanding the development of garde, writing that, electronic component of the Symphony no.3, The tapes contain all different stages of production, the composer’s late compositional technique as ‘Collages’ neither of the publishers of Gerhard’s from initial source recordings to ‘multilevel well as the early development of electronic music most of us had already noticed for some time that, instrumental music (Boosey & Hawkes and OUP) compound mixes’ [11] and completed compositions. in the UK. As a result of an AHRC study of the whether German, Italian, Dutch or Belgian, electronic hold copies of his electronic works, or his incidental tapes held in the Gerhard Archive at the music sounds curiously alike in its timbral aspect. If the works incorporating electronics. The major Cambridge University Library it is possible to possibilities were really unlimited, one couldn’t help feeling that these composers were strangely coincident repository of Gerhard’s electronic music is the understand the composer’s technique and and repetitive in the use they made of them [4] archive held in the Cambridge University Library. A thoughts on electronic music and how they small number of recordings and cues of theatrical evolved as his work with magnetic tape became and that the sine tone has a ‘rigid, cold, dead-signal productions are held at the British Sound Archive and more and more refined. quality. It is utterly unsuited to convey anything the Archive of the Royal Shakespeare Company. warm, tender, vivid, alive in human experience’ [5]. 1. INTRODUCTION Gerhard was rather interested in the transformation of During the 1950s and 1960s, Gerhard gathered a acoustic source materials, stating that ‘the significant magnetic tape collection in his studio, Roberto Gerhard considered himself an explorer of microphone captures the living spark of the natural corresponding to a major repository of historical sound rather than someone who merely experimented acoustic source’ [6]. Gerhard was, however, more sound recordings of his own work in which all areas Fig.1: a tape affected by severe curly tape deformation. with it. Central to this exploration in the final two circumspect than either Edgard Varèse or John Cage of his compositional activity are represented. decades of his life (1950-1970) was electronic music. in his use of such acoustic sources. In an unpublished Following Gerhard’s death in 1970, Poldi Gerhard This in itself offers a unique perspective on In his writings from 1930, Gerhard is as prophetic notebook entry from 1957 Gerhard writes that he continued to play back the recordings, helping to Gerhard’s working methods as he left very few regarding the future of music as Cage and Varese’s considers that, ‘the term ‘musique concrète’ is identify their contents with her own annotations and sketches relating to his instrumental work, preferring were to be later in the decade. He wrote, ridiculous’ [7] and later in 1959 he wrote that, comments. After her own death in February 1994, the to destroy them and leave only the fair copy of the studio was dismantled and the tapes were deposited autograph score. Adding ‘noises’ to music, on the other hand opens doors in principle, anything that comes from an acoustic at the Cambridge University Library with the rest of to a distinctive cinephonic genre […] we should accept source is possible material for musique concrète. This, Gerhard’s archive. In 2008 the inventory of the tape that there is all the immense repertoire of acoustic All tapes have a single gauge of ¼ inch, and of course, throws the gates wide open – too wide, collection took place, and later that year, Gerhard’s impressions of an ‘extra-musical’ order that attack our perhaps – to material of all sorts, musical and not so comprise a variety of track formats including: full- archive was donated to the Cambridge University ears all the time, and constitutes an almost unexplored musical. The French themselves, for instance, are not track mono, half-track mono, half-track stereo, or territory, untested as to its aesthetic value to the above using pots and pans for their exercices aux Library. quarter-track stereo. Digital transfer of the tapes musician. [1] casseroles as they describe them.’ [8] involves taking care of irregular or loose winds, A preliminary catalogue of Gerhard’s Tape Archive mechanical deterioration of tape headers, or dry Although Gerhard writes in Concrete Music and Gerhard’s approach to electronic music with its comprising 714 items was compiled by one of the splices. However, most of the tapes in the collection Electronic Sound Composition that he approached emphasis on the abstract ‘musical’ quality of authors (Karman, 2008). During this stage, the are in excellent playing condition. ‘the electronic medium strictly as a sideline’ [2], the concrete sounds rather than their associative meaning annotations on boxes and other materials found on importance of this work and its impact on his and the sampling and transformation of his own the tape containers were documented and the general 3. GERHARD’ STUDIO instrumental composition has thus far received scant state of the collection was assessed. Different instrumental compositions is akin to the work of academic interest. Gerhard himself maintained that problems were identified including on-going Iannis Xenakis and Bruno Maderna – two composers According to the International Electronic Music working in the electronic medium had resulted in a, chemical degradation processes (see Fig.1), and a for whom electronic music and its techniques were to Catalogue (1968) compiled by Hugh Davies, the first play a central part in informing their compositional number of tapes were found to be incorrectly labeled 1 informal activities in Gerhard’s private permanent or misplaced. The current research project involves number of far-reaching morphological changes in the aesthetic. For instance, Gerhard’s use of concrete, studio are listed as having been initiated in 1954. The manner of organizing sound and it seems to me that instrumental and electronic sound sources in these changes are bound to affect methods of Audiomobile II DNA (1963) has a kinship in composition in the traditional field of instrumental approach with Maderna’s La Rire (1962) which 1 2 composition as well.