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EVEN ORPHEUS NEEDS A SYNTHI

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2016

James Gardner
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Abstract

In recent years there has been an increase in the quantity, if not necessarily the quality, of scholarly and popular writing on the histories of electronic music in Britain. In this literature, the contributions of Peter Zinovieff (b. 1933) and his computer-equipped electronic music studio to those histories have been variously exaggerated, underestimated and misreported. This article attempts to correct this misinformation, investigating Zinovieff's solo work and his collaborations with Harrison Birtwistle, Hans Werner Henze and others, through a critical discussion of two recent contributions to the discourse surrounding the compositions realised at Zinovieff's EMS studio in the 1960s and 70s.

Type
RESEARCH ARTICLES
Information
Tempo , Volume 70 , Issue 276 , April 2016 , pp. 56 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

1 The two main triggers leading to Zinovieff's creative re-emergence were his appearance in Matthew Bate's and Claire Harris's short film on EMS, What The Future Sounded Like (Porthmeor Productions, 2006), http://www.whatthefuturesoundedlike.com (accessed 1 January 2016), and the commission of the piece Bridges from Somewhere and Another to Somewhere Else, instigated by Russell Haswell as part of The Morning Line project for TBA21, exhibited in Istanbul in 2010.

2 See, for example, Zinovieff's 2010 appearance at the Red Bull Academy, http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/dr-peter-zinovieff-the-original-tectonic-sounds (accessed 1 January 2016).

3 Tom Hall, ‘Before The Mask: Birtwistle's electronic music collaborations with Peter Zinovieff’, in Harrison Birtwistle Studies, ed. David Beard, Kenneth Gloag and Nicholas Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 63–94.

4 Peter Zinovieff, Electronic Calendar: The EMS Tapes (Space Age Recordings ORBIT015CD, June 2015).

5 A typical recent example of gullible coverage would be Ben Beaumont-Thomas, ‘Peter Zinovieff: “I taught Ringo to play synth. He wasn't very good – but neither was I”’ The Guardian, 20 October 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/oct/20/peter-zinovieff-ringo-ems-synths-interview (accessed 1 January 2016).

6 This device became known later as the VCS-1, and its commission by Banks led to the invention, by Zinovieff, David Cockerell and Tristram Cary, of the VCS3, launched in November 1969.

7 The exceptions are Zinovieff's Electronic Calendar track ‘Now Is The Time To Say Goodbye’, and Birtwistle's incidental music for Ibsen's Brand, which Hall briefly discusses. Both involved Zinovieff's studio in Great Milton, Oxford, whither he moved in late 1976. A detailed account of Birtwistle's music for the National Theatre is eagerly awaited.

8 See https://hughdaviesproject.wordpress.com (accessed 1 January 2016).

9 Banks was Australian, of course, but he started his electronic work in London and was associated with the British electronic art music scene in the early 1970s.

10 Helliwell's book on this subject, Tape Leaders is currently in preparation.

11 At present, perhaps Louis Niebur's judicious and well-contextualized outline of Derbyshire's work in his Special Sound: The Creation and Legacy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) comes closest, but a dispassionate, even-handed and thorough account of her life and work is, alas, unlikely to appear in print for some time yet.

12 Tom Hall is alert to this journalistic tendency: see his article ‘Peter Zinovieff and Cultures of Electronic Music’, Bulletin of the Computer Arts Society, Page69 (Spring 2013) pp. 1–3Google Scholar.

13 Cockerell also played a crucial role in the design of most of EMS's signature products, e.g. the VCS3 and Synthi 100 synthesisers, its sequencers and the Synthi Hi-Fli.

14 In fact, Zinovieff had been using his computer to control sound devices from its arrival in his studio in mid-1967, thanks to various interfacing devices developed with Cockerell. But MUSYS was easier to use and more powerful than the programs Zinovieff had used until that point.

15 This structure, often referred to as a ‘shed’ was designed and built by Nicholas Dimbleby.

16 At the Watermill Theatre, Bagnor, Newbury on 10 September 1966.

17 The source of randomness in this case was the radioactivity from colleague Mark Dowson's luminous radium-dial wristwatch, picked up by a Geiger-Müller tube. The resulting pulses were used to interrupt a ring-counter to supply random data.

18 Now better known as the writer Josceline Dimbleby.

19 Various artists: Interface (Space Age Recordings ORBIT 019CD, 2000).

20 On 24 April 1972, a concert that also included the premiere of Birtwistle's Chronometer.

21 Not, as the booklet implies, part of the Unit Delta Plus concert; it was realised in 1968 and premiered at the London Planetarium on 22 March of that year.

22 Peter Zinovieff, ‘A Computer Controlled Electronic Music Studio’, DECUS Proceedings 1968 (Fourth European Seminar) (Maynard, MA: Digital Equipment Computer Users Society, 1968), pp. 139–45.

23 Peter Zinovieff, ‘A Computerized Electronic Music Studio’, Electronic Music Reports, No.1 (September 1969), Institute of Sonology at Utrecht State University, pp. 5–22.

24 This was a foil-covered booklet produced for a Queen Elizabeth Hall concert on 10 February 1969, which included Birtwistle's Four Interludes for a Tragedy. The booklet is significant for its inclusion of advertisements for the first commercially available EMS products and a lengthy discussion of Zinovieff's studio.

25 Zinovieff, Peter, ‘The Special Case of Computer Intuitive Music Scores’ The London Magazine, 9/4 (1969), pp. 165–76Google Scholar

26 Evans worked very sporadically for Zinovieff between summer 1966 and January 1969.

27 The sole exception is the photo of the 1970 MUSYS system at EMS, reproduced – with its original Letraset labelling – on pp. 22–3 of the booklet.

28 A longer offcut, ‘June Rose’, seems to be just a source tape for Henze's China Music.

29 Hans Werner Henze, Bohemian Fifths: an Autobiography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 318.

30 Hans Werner Henze, Tristan (Deutsche Grammophon 2530 834, 1977)

31 Hans Werner Henze, Compases para preguntas ensimismadas/Violin Concerto No. 2 (Decca HEAD 5, 1974).

32 A performance of this piece may be seen towards the end of the BBC-TV programme on electronic music, Same Trade as Mozart, first broadcast on 3 August 1969.

33 At 6′10″, 6′15″ and 6′40″.

34 These include Silbury Air, Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae Perpetuum, much of The Mask of Orpheus, and the Clarinet Quintet.

35 Nicholas Jones, ‘The sound of Raasay: Birtwistle's Hebridean experience’ in Harrison Birtwistle Studies, pp. 175–205.

36 This title is a modern re-naming – the contemporary term used by EMS for ‘digitised’ would be ‘analysed’. The piece's alternative title is ‘Rent Collection Day’.

37 Peter Zinovieff, personal communication 6 September 2015.

38 David Beard, ‘“The life of my music”: what the sketches tell us’, in Harrison Birtwistle Studies, pp. 120–74, at 147, n.91.

39 Hall, ‘Before The Mask’, p. 63.

40 Gilbert, Anthony, ‘SPNM Composers' Weekend’, The Musical Times, Vol. 109, No. 1508 (1968), p. 946Google Scholar.

41 Peter Zinovieff, interview with the author, 26 November 2014.

42 Zinovieff was secretary, or at least honorary secretary, of the BSEM.

43 Zinovieff's efforts in this direction are discussed in Nicola Candlish's PhD thesis, ‘The Development of Resources for Electronic Music in the UK, with Particular Reference to the Bids to Establish a National Studio’, Durham University, 2012.

44 Zinovieff wrote the libretto and scenario for Birtwistle's opera The Mask of Orpheus and the words for Nenia: The Death of Orpheus for soprano and ensemble.

45 Hall intriguingly reveals that one of Birtwistle's initial ideas for the piece was to do with weaving looms and shuttles, but, curiously, he does not remark on Stockhausen's use of the shuttle sound as a formal marker in his Trans (1971).

46 Peter Zinovieff, booklet notes for Chronometer (Argo ZRG 790), dated 1974.

47 Various Composers, Recovery/Discovery: 40 years of Surround Electronic Music in the UK (Sound and Music SAM 081, 2008).

48 As Hall points out, the four-track master tape used for the SAM release is believed to have been the one played at the piece's premiere. It therefore pre-dates the source of ‘Chronometer '71’, which is a copy of the master prepared for the 1975 vinyl release and may or may not also be the ‘revised version’ advertised for a Queen Elizabeth Hall performance in April 1973.

49 Archive footage from this event, with Cary introducing the item and Zinovieff and an assistant starting the computer appears in What The Future Sounded Like, at 14′32″.

50 Released on LP as L'Oiseau-Lyre DSLO17 in 1977 and reissued on CD by Clarinet Classics in 2006.

51 To be specific: the electronic part of Interlude 1 on Hacker's recording is an edit of Interlude 2 on Electronic Calendar; Hacker's Interlude 2 is a double-speed version of Electronic Calendar Interlude 1; AH Interlude 3 is an edit of the normal speed Electronic Calendar Interlude 1, and AH Interlude 4 is a different edit of Electronic Calendar Interlude 2. Consequently, the third and fourth interludes on Electronic Calendar appear for the first time on record.

52 Alan Hacker, liner notes to A Portrait of Alan Hacker (Clarinet Classics CC052, 2006).

53 The director of Universal Edition, then Birtwistle's publisher.

54 See http://www.adasamshop.com/index.php/record-labels/space-age/peter-zinovieff.html (accessed 1 January 2016).

55 Stuart Benjamin, review of Electronic Calendar for the ‘Echoes and Dust’ website, 11 July 2015, http://echoesanddust.com/2015/06/peter-zinovieff-electronic-calendar-the-ems-tapes/ (accessed 1 January 2016).

56 Hall, ‘Before The Mask’, p. 70.

57 Mann, William, ‘Music in London’ The Musical Times, Vol. 110, No 1516 (1969), p. 645Google Scholar.

58 Stephen Walsh, The Observer, 27 April 1969, p. 28.

59 Robert Adlington, The Music of Harrison Birtwistle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000), pp. 136–7.

60 Michael Hall, Harrison Birtwistle (London: Robson Books, 1984), p.163.

61 Excerpts from the piece were also included in the film A Couple of Things about Harry, broadcast on BBC2 on 4 April 1971.

62 Ronald Crichton, ‘Signals’, The Financial Times, 19 January 1971, p. 3. The Guardian's Edward Greenfield also reviewed this concert.

63 Gerald Larner, ‘Gabrieli Quartet at Harewood House’, The Guardian, 2 March 1971, p. 8.

64 Stephen Walsh, ‘Respectably Modern’, The Times, 24 May 1972, p. 15.

65 Hall, ‘Before The Mask’, p. 72.

66 Gerald Larner, ‘Giulini and the LSO at the Usher Hall’, The Guardian, 24 August 1973, p. 12.

67 Harrison Birtwistle, Chanson de Geste, (London: Universal Edition, 1973) UE 15561; the underlining and capitalisation is taken from the original.

68 Adlington, The Music of Harrison Birtwistle, p. 57.

69 Griffiths, Paul: ‘Birtwistle, Harvey’, The Musical Times Vol. 115, No. 1571 (Jan., 1974), p. 57Google Scholar.

70 Christopher Wintle, personal communication, 5 August 2015. A studio recording of this arrangement, performed by the Ulysses Ensemble and conducted by Jonathan Harvey, was broadcast by the BBC on 23 April 1974.

71 Hall, ‘Before The Mask’, p. 87.

72 Harrison Birtwistle, The Mask of Orpheus (NMC D050, 1997)

73 Letter from Peter Zinovieff to Don Banks 25 July 1975, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney: Qasar /Tony Furse archive, Correspondence 96/382/2–3.

74 EMS – the synthesiser company – changed hands a number of times after its initial collapse in December 1979, and was eventually bought in 1995 by Robin Wood, who first joined EMS in 1970. As EMS (Cornwall) Ltd., he keeps the flame (and the archive), and still builds VCS3 and Synthi A synthesisers by hand to special order.