Gentle Fire: An Early Approach to Live Electronic Music Author(s): Hugh Davies Source: Leonardo Music Journal, Vol.

11, Not Necessarily "English Music": Britain's Second Golden Age (2001), pp. 53-60 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1513428 . Accessed: 11/07/2011 14:36
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Gentle
to

Fire:

An

Early Music

Approach

Live

Electronic

Hugh Davies
ABSTRACT

the mid-1960s, several initially unrelated Erom developments brought into being small groups of young musical performers who were substantially more happy-go-lucky and self-reliant than previous generations. They traveled around to play "gigs"like hippies, in secondhand vans filled with instruments and sound equipment, often for little or no money. To many people this immediately conjures up the more adventurous rock music that developed in the heyday of the Beatles and U.S. West Coast rock groups, but it was also paralleled in areas of contemporary composed music. The contributing developments included more affordable and transportable sound equipment of all kinds, partly due to the increasing availability of transistorized electronic devices such as small mixers and power amplifiers. By the end of the 1960s, it had become possible to build simple circuits from magazines without any detailed knowledge of electronics, and thus some musicians who lacked such expertise found themselves able unassisted to adapt existing circuits and devise other simple ones for use in personal electronic music studios and especially in live electronic music. Above all, however, it was the freer musical attitudes of that decade that motivated such developments. At the end of the 1950s composers had begun to explore indeterminate and mobile forms, unspecified instrumentation and graphic notation in works that in this article I will describe as "experimental music" (just as I have retained other terminology from the time, such as "electronic music"). These elements were eminently suited to live electronic music, for which no standard method has been devised to notate the operation of oscillators, filters and other devices; it also requires greater flexibility from the performers to accommodate imprecisions that may arise at any stage of the basic chain of sound production, modification and amplification. Gentle Fire was one such group. It was founded in 1968 and gave its last concert in 1975. As one of its members, I have reconstructed much of what we experienced some 30 years ago, aided by feedback from other members of the group.

words, nearly all electronic

music

BRITISH ELECTRONICMUSIC IN THE 1960S

Electronic music in Britain had an unusual early history. My Music Catalog,compiled in the winter of International Electronic 1966-1967, showed that until then there had been a very low proportion of concert works in Britain in relation to its position as the fourth most prolific producer worldwide; in other

production was background or applied music for radio, television, theater and film, either from the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop or from private studios such as those of Tristram Cary and Daphne Oram [1]. The only major composer to have worked more extensively in was Roberto the medium Gerhard, but regrettably he also produced very little tape music for concerts, apart from the for No. Symphony 3 (Collages) orchestra and tape (1960). None of the younger generation of avant-garde composers, either members of the "Manchester School" of Peter Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle and Alexander Goehr or the London-trained Richard Rodney Bennett and Cornelius Cardew, had produced any serious contribution to the medium up to then, and, with minor exceptions, only Birtwistle was to do so subsequently. Live electronic music was nonexistent. This situation changed radically after 1968, when the first active university and college studios were set up in London, at Goldsmiths' (now Goldsmiths) College and the Royal College of Music and at York University; the presence of a modular Moog synthesizer at Manchester University from 1967 did not lead to any significant creative or pedagogic results. Following Cardew'swork with Stockhausen around 1960, I was the latter's assistant for 2 years in the mid-1960s, which included participation in performances of his first live electronic Iand II) as a member of compositions (Mixturand Mikrophonie his newly formed live electronic group. This was Stockhausen's first contact with the youngest generation of British composers, consolidated soon afterwards by Tim Souster and Roger Smalley (the co-founders in 1969 of the Cambridge-based live electronic group Intermodulation). Among other things this contact led to the participation in 1971 of all the members of Gentle Fire and Intermodulation in the earliest performances of Sternklang, three members of Gentle Fire in Alphabet of fur Liege (1972) and of Michael Robinson from Gentle Fire and two members of Intermodulation as guests with the London Sinfonietta in 1973 on a Stockhausen tour in Stop and the world premiere of Ylem.
Hugh Davies (composer, performer), 25 Albert Road, London, N4 3RR, U.K. E-mail: <hugh-davies@beeb.net>.

the The author describes cirand of cumstances theformation of electronic developmentthelive Gentle indismusic Fire, group elecaspects affecting cussing trnir, milcir,r;n ginnvornl e nnrl 'th,o di i dIUl LIe He to particulartheensemble. Fire's stressesGentle distinctive collaboration toward approaches giving and technology, particular comattention itsunique to group with Collaborations conpositions. are temporaries alsodiscussed. the addresses the Finally, author to factors leading thedissolution ofthegroup.

O 2001 ISAST

LEONARDO

MUSICJOURNAL,

Vol. 11, pp. 53-60,

2001

53

was obliged to become more proficient with the fairly basic studio equipment, especially in its maintenance. Early in 1968 Orton began to hold Saturday morning experimental music sessions in York for any music students who were interested; all future members of the group (see section below), apart from myself, took a prominent part in these. That summer, the future members of Gentle Fire figured prominently in a series of four concerts of experimental music at York University [2] and one at Sheffield University. Thereafter, the York-based group members consulted the I Chingon the best way to extend their previous activities: hexagram No. 37, the Family, came up-the two trigrams of which are Sun HOW GENTLE FIRE CAME and Li, meaning Gentle Wind and INTO EXISTENCE Clinging Fire respectively-indicating After completing my work with clearly to the group that they should Stockhausen, followed by the compila- continue these activities and supplying tion of my InternationalElectronicMusic the name Gentle Fire. Catalogin Paris and the United States, I Following the first couple of perforreturned to Britain in the summer of mances in York and nearby Hull, as a re1967, moving to London in the early au- sult of my existing duo connection with tumn. I was invited to set up a small elec- Orton and my slightly greater experitronic music studio at Goldsmiths' Col- ence with live electronics, I was added to the group in November 1968; I had allege, then part of London University, and began giving evening classes there ready worked with all the other memfor adults in January 1968. Richard bers in other contexts, having included Orton, whom I had met 2 years before at works by Orton and Richard Bernas in a Cambridge University and had re- concert series I was organizing in Lonmained in contact with, had recently don, and having performed a group imbeen appointed lecturer in the music provisation in an open-air concert in department at York University (which London with three of the York students was about to move into a purpose-built in the summer of 1968. The Orton/ complex and become the most adven- Davies live electronic duo overlapped turous music department in Britain over with the group for another half year, fulthe next few years) and installed a simi- filling lower-budget invitations. Origilar studio there a couple of months nally The Gentle Fire, the group's name later. In the summer of 1968 he and I was later altered to Gentle Fire. formed a live electronic duo, which gave At around that time, I analyzed live some 10 concerts in the course of a year electronic music as the simultaneous (including the British premiere of live electronic transformation of sounds Musicfor Piano), as well whose sources fall into one or more of Cage's Electronic as performing live electronics in one four categories [3], which are here work by each of us and in the British somewhat expanded: sounds played on premiere of Stockhausen's Mikrophonie conventional instruments (or quasi-conII; all of these involved additional per- ventional invented instruments); on formers, using a combination of our found or adapted objects (or equivalent own equipment and a few items tempo- noise-making invented instruments); on rarily borrowed from our respective stu- electronic oscillators or instruments dios. We were both self-taught on the (which, like synthesizers, may incorpotechnical side, learning as we went rate their own modification devices); along; in my own evening classes I was and sounds replayed from earlier refrequently aware that in some areas I cordings (which more recently would was only a couple of weeks more ad- include samplers). Stockhausen had vanced than some of my students. The concentrated mainly on the first catYork University studio was to get its first egory; Cage, Tudor and Mumma on the permanent technician within the next 2 three others; between us Orton and I, years, but at Goldsmiths' College this individually and in the duo, explored all did not happen until a decade later, so I four, as did Gentle Fire. The influence of Stockhausen's approach to live electronics, however, involving his typically detailed compositional control over what was played and operated, was, in my own work and that of Gentle Fire, counterbalanced by that of John Cage and David Tudor, who featured greater freedoms and more diverse combinations of sound sources and often of independent loudspeaker channels. This was exemplified in a remarkable concert they gave in London, together with Gordon Mumma, in November 1966 during a visit by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, which for many years was talked about as a major landmark by all who were in the audience.

GROUP MEMBERS AND INSTRUMENTATION

The following were the members of Gentle Fire during its 1968-1975 existence: * Richard Bernas: piano, percussion (including tabla), voice * Hugh Davies: invented instruments, live electronics, clarinet (khene,sheng [Oriental mouth organs]) * Patrick Harrex: violin, percussion * Graham Hearn: piano, recorder, VCS-3 synthesizer, percussion * StuartJones: trumpet, cello (electric guitar) * Richard Orton: tenor voice, live electronics * Michael Robinson: cello, piano. One of the original members, Harrex, decided early in 1970 that his intended career would conflict with the need to be flexibly available for group rehearsals and concerts; he was replaced by Robinson, who had also participated in the 1968 Saturday morning sessions in York. A year later Orton also left, primarily because of similar difficulties with his teaching commitments. After Orton left we decided to continue as a quintet rather than a sextet, since (apart from I) GroupComposition there was nothing in our current or potential repertoire for which the additional person was required. Hearn occasionally was not available for a concert, requiring us to select a program for four performers. We also began to shift the focus of the group awayfrom York, as Bernas and Robinson had already moved to London. Although all of us are listed as playing more than one instrument, our apparent abilities as multi-instrumentalists are partly misleading; with the exception of Jones, only the first-named instrument in the list above was a primary one that we occasionally played outside the group, usually in more conventional music. In addition to the instruments listed above, all or most of us occasionally also played piano and/or other keyboards, VCS3 (Putney) synthesizers, conventional or found percussion, invented instruments and, where required, we also spoke or sang, in addition to operating electronic equipment. In certain pieces, in which an understanding of the composer's style and intentions were of crucial importance, and little or no virtuosity was required (primarily in works with unspecified instrumentation), other instruments were used: for example, Hearn and Orton played violins and Bernas the viola in Earle Brown's FourSystems (Jones

54

Davies, Gentle Fire

sound becomes gold / becomes pure, calmly burning fire";but when my efforts were amalgamated for the published score with translations by two American composers living in Cologne, the final version ended up as "and the whole sound turns to gold / to pure, gently shimmering fire" [5]. I don't remember who originally suggested this change, perhaps someone from the group, but, when Stockhausen very thoroughly COLLABORATIONS checked the English translation, he acThe group worked with Stockhausen on cepted it as an interesting coincidence. Both Gentle Fire and Intermodmany occasions. Although we knew Tudor and Mumma, having met ulation were recommended by StockCage, hausen on several occasions when a fesup with them in at least three cities when we and they were touring Europe tival needed other performers for works in the summer of 1972, we only per- by him; between 1971 and 1975, both in formed with them once, in Christian groups performed in Sternklang West Wolff's Burdocks, together with the Berlin, Munich (two performances), Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Shiraz, La Rochelle, Paris (twice) and on one night that autumn at the Sadler's made the commercial recording. For Wells Theatre (now the Coliseum) in two further performances in Bonn in London. We also collaborated several 1980, Gentle Fire had its only reunion, times with Erhard Grosskopf (who wrote in which Orton returned as a guest. On one work for us and featured us in the some of these occasions we also had the world premieres of two others) and opportunity to include works by ourWolff and, early on, once with the selves or by other composers, or were painter and composer Tom Phillips. In subsequently invited back for this pur1974 Grosskopf and Wolff (who at the pose. Although Gentle Fire's interests time was also living in West Berlin) per- and sound world were very different formed in their own works with us at from Stockhausen's own (more so than short notice when Hearn was not avail- those of Intermodulation), we worked able for a concert at a festival in Metz; hard in realizing his music; even in his Wolff also volunteered to take part in intuitive text scores from Aus den sieben our performance of Stockhausen's Zeiten, each of Tagenand Fur kommende we happily accepted. Frederic our performances was clearly recognizSpektren; Rzewski considered composing an "elec- able as based on the score in question. tronic symphony" for us, and Earle One of the most memorable occasions Brown was also interested in writing for was in 1972, when we performed the group. Although Alvin Lucier al- Intensitdt in the presence of the comlowed us to give the premiere of his poser in a concert during the Fire[4], it was not composed score Gentle Rencontres Internationales d'Art specially for us (because it required so- Contemporain at La Rochelle; unlike most interpretations of these intuitive phisticated sound processing equipment for what would now be called sonic scores by us and by other groups, inmorphing, it was not really suited to the stead of the often-occurring situation of group, unlike his Chambers,which we one musician continuing what he was performed several times). Lucier in- playing for some time after everyone tended the title of GentleFireto refer to else had finished, the music built to a the alchemical meaning (i.e. the slow climax and ended quickly and cleanly; heating of metals for their transmuta- regrettably, no recording was made. The widely recognized similarities betion) and was unaware of our group's in the I Ching. tween Gentle Fire and Intermodulation origin Another work in our repertoire that as live electronic composer-performer also referred to the group's name was groups with a strong Stockhausen conStockhausen's 1968 verbal score Setzdie nection outweighed the differences that Segelzur Sonne (Set the Sails towards the we ourselves saw. The careers of both Sun). In the version that I originally groups were in many ways parallel, as made of several of the texts from Aus den can be seen by comparing the present sieben Tagenfor British performances, I article with a retrospective on translated the last two lines "undderganze Intermodulation published in 1977 by Klang zu Gold / zu reinem, ruhig Souster [6]. In 1986 Gentle Fire and leuchtendem Feuerwird' as "and the whole Intermodulation were singled out by played a conveniently available double bass instead of cello on an early recording we made of this work, forming a more conventional string quintet). Occasionally in rehearsal, when we were getting stale and playing too much unnecessarily,we would even swap instruments in order to avoid cliches (e.g. I once played one of the cellos).

Paul Griffiths [7] as the two (European) live electronic groups that-unlike AMM and Musica Elettronica Viva-had specialized in composed music. Intermodulation almost alwaysappeared with a VCS3 for each of the four group members, often for the transformation of the sound of each player's instrument, whereas in Gentle Fire there was usually only one, played by Hearn as an instrument in its own right. The virtuosic element that was a feature of Intermodulation as performers was much less prominent with Gentle Fire, as reflected in the nature of each group's chosen repertoire and specially composed pieces. West Germany was the most frequent destination for both groups, only partly through the Stockhausen connection; because of its federal structure, nine radio stations across the country had substantial funds for supporting contemporary music, and one could be sure of interest from producers in at least a couple of these-Gentle Fire and Intermodulation were each invited by the same four radio stations, either together or independently. During a festival at London's Royal Court theater in 1970, Gentle Fire put on the first of three performances of Stockhausen's rarely staged theater piece Obenund Unten, in which the two adult performers were Marianne Faithfull and Ian Hogg, and some members of the group worked with a group of actors from the same theater for a few days in 1971. Our contacts with artists from other media occasionally found us appearing at the same event as, for example, sound poets, and included performances at the festivals organized by the sound poet Henri Chopin at his home in Essex. In 1970 we commissioned a pentagonal graphic score from the artist John Furnival, Ode (A Two-GuineaOdefor the GentleFire, Including, for GoodMeasure, The Ballad of Fearless Fred), for which we paid the modest sum of two guineas (?22s in pre-decimal currency). As a footnote, the program for one of the group's first major concerts in London was designed and printed by Brian Eno. The summer of 1972 was a peak period for British experimental music, not only for Gentle Fire, which made four trips abroad in 5 months, to Cologne and Essen, Zfirich and West Berlin, Munich and Shiraz (in pre-Khomeini Iran) and Liege. With the exception of a single concert in Essen, in each city we performed in two or three concerts and/or participated in workshops, rehearsals with other

Davies, Gentle Fire

55

musicians or recordings. All the other British groups were also very busy, especially performing around Europe. This level of activity in 1972 has never been matched since. In the following year the first oil crisis ended that optimism, and reduced the foreign invitations to Gentle Fire (we were still optimistic for the next year or so, with our LP recording of American works appearing in 1974; we even started to plan a possible trip to Australia and the Far East); but by 1975 the changed situation was certainly one of the reasons for the group's demise in that year. The last concert with a typical Gentle Fire program took place in December 1974, and in the summer of 1975 we participated in two performances of and the LP recording of it in Sternklang Paris, followed by a group improvisation at a college and the performances of two pieces by Robinson in a small art gallery in London, in both cases with one member of the group missing. UNUSUAL PERFORMANCES AND OTHER PROJECTS Although we specialized in performances of concert works, Gentle Fire enjoyed the challenge of performing in unusual spaces. In addition to theaters, art galleries and museums (one wasjust a building site) and a church, we performed on several occasions in parks and streets. At the Shiraz Festival in 1972, we appeared at a roundabout on the outskirts of the city one morning at 8 A.M. and played one of Stockhausen's verbal scores on acoustic instruments; we were soon surrounded by an intrigued audience of passersby-until the security police arrived to break up the concert and remove us and our instruments from the scene. In 1971, at the very first open-air rock festival in Glastonbury, we gave the premiere of IV Fair) at GroupComposition (Glastonbury dawn as the last event of a night's music, on a stage set high up in the side of a silver-clad pyramid and, together with Intermodulation, the Scratch Orchestra and other British groups, participated in a multi-room "Wandelkonzert" at the Goethe Institute in London. Among the workshops we gave as a group, we held seminars and workshops and performed concerts at the Dartington Summer School in 1971 (for 1 week) and 1972 (for a fortnight), and in 1972 also contributed to a course for composition students in Ziirich, which included adding live performances in a concert to two tapes that the students

had created. In these courses we did not always concentrate on our personal repertoire or indeed on live electronic techniques; in workshops, especially for members of the public, we often used Robert Ashley's entirely vocal She Was a Music. Visitor Hearn's Ambulatory or The only scores published under the name of the group were three that were printed in 1973 in an issue of Source: Music of theAvant Garde,edited by Alvin Lucier. As far as I remember there was some editorial confusion as a result of papers being mixed up after a car accident, which meant that two members of Gentle Fire were not represented, and that only one of the three scores that were printed, my own, was part of our repertoire! [8] We had comparably mixed fortunes with LP recordings (see Discography). Our first studio recording, featuring Brown's Four Systems, Toshi Ichiyanagi's Stockhausen's Treffpunkt and Appearance, Wolff's ForJill, was never released. This was followed by a recording session at EMI's prestigious Abbey Road studios of music by Brown, Cage and Wolff (supplemented in Loughborough by Hearn's performance of three of Cage's pieces for solo carillon on one of the only such instruments in Britain) which was released in 1974, but only in West Germany (on Electrola) and Japan (on Toshiba). Together with Intermodulation we were among the 21 musicians who recorded Stockhausen's double LP of Sternklang,reissued in 1992 as a CD on his own label. Otherwise, only two short pieces came out on 17-cm (7") discs: Orton's concertmusic 5 (accompanying a book in an educational series) and Furnival's Ode (included in a retrospective exhibition catalog [9]). Since then, a brief excerpt from GroupComposition IVappeared in the 1991 "LiveElectronics" issue of Contemporary Music ReVI view, and one from GroupComposition is included on the CD accompanying this issue of LMJ. (See Discography for recording details.) We are currently in negotiation with two small labels over the possibility of issuing a CD of recordings from our archive; some broadcast recordings probably still survive in the archives of radio stations. SPECIAL INSTRUMENTS AND ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT We normally took four loudspeakers with us and set up a quadraphonic sound system. It is always more satisfactory to use one's own equipment. Occa-

sionally we needed to supplement it by hiring one or more VCS3 synthesizers, with which we were all already familiar. On one occasion, when at short notice we had to fly to a festival in France, we took our own amplifiers, but in spite of informing the organizer in advance of the specifications we needed, the loudspeakers that were supplied for us proved to be no more than adequate. There are also advantages in using homemade equipment, which can almost alwaysbe repaired quite quickly. We played a number of "homemade" invented instruments. I specialized in doing so, in around 20 pieces, and featured them in two ensemble works of my own. Robinson's gHong, a "gong-tree" that formed the central part of Group III Compositions and T, is described below in connection with those pieces. Jones constructed a type of tabletop electric sitar, which incorporated a real sitar bridge and strings. The loudspeakers at York University were specially assembled locally to a design by the manufacturer of the speaker units, Tannoy, based on the Monitor Gold model. In order to fund this project, a larger quantity was assembled than the university needed; I bought a set of four, which were subsequently used in most of Gentle Fire's concerts. Like most other live electronic groups of the time, we could not afford a sophisticated studio mixer, but used several Uher mixers (designed primarily for operation with the company's portable reel-to-reel tape recorders), which also function well as contact microphone preamplifiers; careful adjustment of different volume controls in the amplification chain reduces noise to a level unnoticeable by an audience. I continue to use them in all performances on my invented instruments. In 1972 I built a special stereo preamplifier box for each member of the group, designed originally for use in Sternklang, incorporating the plug-in stereo input preamplifier circuit board for the Revox A77 tape recorder. While we were working in Zurich for 4 days on a course for music students, we took the opportunity to drive out to Revox's head office nearby and bought the boards directly from the company. My transformation equipment used in the group included simple homemade and adapted pedals for ring-modulation and distortion, as well as a two-range commercial wa-wa (filter) pedal and a choice of bandpass filters, primarily a Krohn-Hite model with separate low- and

56

Davies, Gentle Fire

high-pass control knobs, which could be operated in a manuallyjerky manner that approximated the switched steps of the unusual filters used in Stockhausen's live electronic group. Our realization of Brown's early graphic score Four Systems featured the wa-wapedal and a modified telephone dial, which "gated" sounds routed through two of its terminals when, after "winding it up," I slowly let the dial return to its resting position by maintaining my index finger in it. Five (later four) bowed strings playing a slowly changing sustained background chord were amplified and mixed down to a single channel, which was fed through the pedal and telephone dial. This enabled me to interpret the sequence of horizontal rectangles that make up the score with appropriately filtered bands extracted from the spectrum of the complete string sound. My homemade passive ring-modulator contained only the basic components, as given in various publications and described in detail in my 1976 article "A Simple Ring-Modulator" [10]: two center-tapped transformers and a "bridge"of four diodes. The main problem with all ring-modulators is the leakage of the carrier input, which I discovered was on the earth (ground) connection, and thus unavoidable without additional circuitry. However, it does not occur when both inputs are from sources that are not oscillators, such as microphones and prerecorded tapes. When an oscillator was essential, we managed to disguise the leakage as much as possible, in whatever way was appropriate for the piece in question. In this basic form of ring-modulator the two inputs are not electrically identical, since one of them is connected directly to the center taps of the two transformers; experimentation was necessary to discover the most appropriate input for an oscillator, one of which would normally be better for high frequencies and the other for low ones. At one point I tested one of my ring-modulators in comparison with the ring-modulator in a VCS3, and found that the damping required to reduce or eliminate leakage also affected the output sound, making it blander. The rougher quality produced by my own ring-modulator could, if desired, be smoothed by passing it through a filter, but the reverse was impossible with the blander sound produced by the one in the VCS3. We all had a love/hate relationship with the VCS3 synthesizer. It was primarily played by Graham Hearn in several works; otherwise, unlike some other groups (such

as Intermodulation), we possessed the alternative electronic resources that better matched our musical approach, favoring timbre over pitch. Although most of the instrumental players in Sternklang-apart from Bernas a as the central percussionist-used VCS3 (or the suitcase Synthi A/AKS version) to process their sounds, this was mainly necessary because their low-pass filters could be set to a high resonance, so that, controlled by a pedal, they oscillated as a sine wave at the cutoff frequency, to match the whistle-like overtones produced by the singers (as first introduced in Stockhausen's Stimmung). After the first performance in 1971, we commissioned a friend of mine to design and construct a set of similar filters, so that Jones, Robinson and I did not need to borrow or hire a synthesizer. Jones's realization of Stockhausen's Spiral on the trumpet in 1971 emphasized how we became increasingly able to mimic or replace many types of live electronic treatment with our own type of extended performance techniquesnot so much in a virtuosic direction (as exemplified subsequently by woodwind multiphonics), but by simpler methods such as more subtle timbre control or Jones blowing his trumpet into a bucket containing water for a bubbling modulation effect; air or contact microphones were usually necessary, but it would have been possible to dispense with them in a small room. What we managed to achieve with mostly homemade devices for live electronic transformation by around 1970 was mirrored 15 years later by the first attempts at using high-end digital equipment like the DMX-1000. All the transformation techniques that I heard in a couple of live electronic works in the mid-1980s by young composers (who were no doubt unaware of this) could have been produced with our simple equipment. REPERTOIRE Over the 7 years of the group's existence we gave 245 performances of 100 works by 28 composers; 41 of these were Gentle Fire's collective compositions and pieces by members of the group. Thirty-two performances were recorded for radio and seven for television broadcasts (several works were recorded but never performed live). Gentle Fire's first performances as a group were primarily group improvisations, but from 1969 we concentrated mainly on compositions by

a range of living composers, from solos to quintets (originally sextets), that offered considerable freedom to the performers, often notated verbally and occasionally graphically, and frequently without precise instrumentation; we subsequently only programmed an improvisation about once every 2 years. Alin live we specialized though electronics, some pieces that we performed were entirely acoustic, including works by Ashley, Cage, Cardew, Feldman, Wolff and Hearn. Around half of the works in our repertoire are listed in Simon Emmerson's brief survey, "Live Electronic Music in Britain" [11], which naturally excludes the acoustic pieces. We played more works by Stockhausen than by any other composer, including nine pieces from his two sets of intuitive verbal scores and four works in which individual realizations with improvisational elements needed to be made. Two (Kurzwellen and Spiral) are based on shortwave radio sounds, and the other two (Sternklang and Alphabet Liege)infur volve larger groups of performers. In addition to our Group Compositions and nearly all of the group members' individual works in our repertoire, we gave the world premieres of Stockhausen's verbal scores Anndherung (Approximation, later retitled Ubereinstimmung [Unanimity]) in 1970 and Spektren (Spectra) in 1972, and participated in the world premieres of Sternklang(1971) and Alphabet fur Liege (1972), as well as Grosskopfs Sun (1972) and Looping(specially written for us, 1973), Furnival's Ode (the only work we commissioned, 1971), Tom Phillips' graphic score Op. X No. 6 (together with the composer, 1968) and Lucier's Gentle Fire (1972). Among a dozen British premieres were Cage's CartridgeMusic, Mauricio Kagel's Transicion II, Stockhausen's Kurzwellen, Oben und and zur Unten,RichtigeDauern Setzdie Segel Sonneand Wolffs Edgesand ForJill,as well as works by Ashley, David Behrman and Ichiyanagi. The compositions we performed most frequently were Cartridge Music, Brown's Four Systems, Grosskopf's Stockhausen's Intensitdt, Spektren, Looping, Spiral, Sternklang, Treffpunkt and Wolff's Burdocks, Verbindung, Edgesand For Jill, our Group CompositionsIII-VI and some of our own compositions. The composer whose work perhaps most typifies the spirit of Gentle Fire is Graham Hearn. His scores imposed no virtuosic elements, created a unique sound world, left considerable interpretive freedom and often required an almost ritualistic approach to the perfor-

Davies, Gentle Fire

57

ToLiz
BE ART HEARN: MUST FED(1972) GRAHAM ANDINSTRUMENTS PIANO PIANO
I I

9;

1?'~~~~~~

in overall notation space-time, (With slow; quiet; tempo legato) pedal;

ACCOMPANIMENT WHAT DO TO I) (CHANCE MACHINE/DIE

DURATIONS II) (CHANCE MACHINE/DIE 1. Simultaneously one pianosound. with 2. Inbetweentwo consecutivepianosounds. to 3. Exactlengthof pianophrase,beginning end. 4. Somewhat longerthanpianophrase. thanwholephrase. thanone sound,shorter 5. Longer another sound with 6. Simultaneously (excl.pianist). player's

1. Single note 2. Chord/cluster 3. Melodic phrase 4. Noise 5. Mixed bag reminiscence 6. Free

Fig. 1. Graham Hearn, Art Must Be Fed, score of a composition for Gentle Fire, 1972. Hearn's compositions typified the spirit of Gentle Fire. (? Graham Hearn)

mance (in, for example, Art Must beFed) (Fig. 1).

GROUP COMPOSITIONS AND OTHER SPECIALLY COMPOSED WORKS

As Simon Emmerson has pointed out [12], Gentle Fire was "a welcome exception" in pioneering group compositions, which warranta more detailed discussion. Apart from a few compositions that involved additional performers, group compositions were the most substantialworks in our repertoire, and together form the most representative encapsulation of the group's music. We explored three different approaches: detailed live electronic treatments, specially created instruments and a circularstructurein which each person composed the part for the next person in the cycle. In comparison, the collaborative work of other live electronic groups in that period largely focused on other aspects. Stockhausen's group only performed his music; the Sonic Arts Union and Composers Inside Electronics concentrated on performing compositions by their individual members; Cage,

Tudor and Mumma (later replaced by Takehisa Kosugi) performed their own works as well as others specially commissioned by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.Intermodulation's three collective compositions were much less significant for that group. AMM, and increasingly Musica Elettronica Viva, only performed group improvisations.The Canadian Electronic Ensemble (founded in 1971) created group compositions in which each member composed a separate section, while from 1978 in the U.S. works by the members of the League of Automatic Music Composers (the forerunner of The Hub) utilized networked microcomputers. In an introduction to the GroupCompositions that Robinson wrote for a broadcast by the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne in 1973, he identified the similarities between pairs of these works, as discussed below, and analyzed our musical motivations: "the idea of making situations which select sound from the entire possible range without employing conscious decision before or during the performance is one which now seems to be established with us" [13]. Such an ap-

proach can only be successful when the situation is well matched to the sound sources and allows them to shape and define the music. I GroupComposition (1970) was scored for tenor voice, cello, two VCS3 synthesizers and other live electronics. The VCS3s were used for detailed live electronic treatments, and the "patches"for these were carefully worked out and written down. Comparable live electronic treatments of a freer nature were featured in GroupComposition VI. II (1971) was origiGroupComposition nally a sextet that included Richard Orton; after he left the group we decided to revise it as a quintet under the title GroupComposition (1972), for two V cellos, piano (interior), electronic organ and live electronics. In practice this was a fairly simple alteration, as in both versions each person in the group composed a part for the next person in a predetermined circle; for the revision one of the original six layers was omitted and only Hearn was affected: he took over the part previously played by Orton. The individual parts were composed as separate layers, without any of

58

Davies, Gentle Fire

Procedure Pianist of Ifyou of for without the length theperformance. arereminded other change theentire Repeat phrase etc. audible humming, the singing for whistling, by stylesetc., youmaymake memory pieces,moods, to a from The short (cf.freereminiscence). phrase be transposed fraction oneperformance may periods another. Accompaniment when feelreadyevents what doforaneventandwhen do it. Perform Usetwodiceto decide you you you time-use silence. takeyour You can the than to are level; occasionally piano be drowned. canrelate piano Dynamics equal orsofter are if reminiscences snatches and of to what play thesounds thepianist other players youwish.Free you hummed whistled. or to familiar you-theymaybe sung,played, of music
fromthe dice is odd, makea changeinthe soundwithrespectto obtained Ifthe sum of the two numbers are If obtained Otherwise the events straight. the two numbers (excl.duration). play anyparameter numbers Further identical of thattotalnumber succeedingevents is to be performed badly. identical, betweenthese andthe otherevents. distinction Ensure thereis sufficient that maybe required.

or to number(s). sucha seriesof eventsis completed be ignored added theprevious before obtained may a event. own to relative your capabilities,badly what You mustdecide Exaggeration performed constitutes,

us knowing what the other layers would consist of, but taking them into consideration. Two parts required tape loops; one of these, created by Robinson, was more than 10 seconds in duration. It contained the sounds of a clock ticking and its alarm sounding, and ring-modulated whatever Jones played. Hearn's part for me consisted of five large dicelike wooden pentagons, five faces of which contained note values or rests, plus a tape loop containing five differently filtered telephone rings that from time to time I was to make briefly audible (one pentagon and one telephone ring was assigned to each of the players; this created a slowly evolving rhythmic cycle of electronic transformations (primarily filtering and ring-modulation) of what was played by the musicians. My part for Robinson was a single page on which the player followed a sequence of instructions in the border surrounding a graphic score, part of which was derived from Furnival's Odegraphic. Two further Group Compositions were III interrelated: GroupComposition (1971) used only the quadraphonic gHong "gong-tree"instrument as a sound source

(Fig. 2), while the more substantial Group IV Fair) (1971) Composition (Glastonbury was given an additional dimension through each performer adding one or two instruments of his choice. A wooden base and central column supported cross beams from which were suspended three very large metal oven-like grills, each about 5 x 4 feet in size. The grills were specially constructed to Robinson's specifications, and he designed and built the framework for them. On the fourth side we added a wooden crossbar from which four large springs were suspended. On each grill and on the crossbar we mounted at least two different contact microphones; for each side of the gHong a good quality contact microphone (such as a stethoscope microphone or the transducer from a vibration exciter) was combined with a cheap microphone or microphone insert that had a poor frequency response, with only a middle or high frequency range. Simply by varying the levels on a mixer for each pair of microphones we were able to obtain substantial filtering effects. VI GroupComposition (UnfixedParities) (1972) concentrated on an electronic

sound-processing system, as in Group CompositionI, this time for modifying speech. (This homemade system is described in the CD Contributors' Notes section of this issue of LMJ.) Before the group came to an end we had begun to plan GroupComposition VII, which was to have been a meal, performed/eaten on the stage. Among the ideas that offered live electronic possibilities were the insertion of two "probes" (connected to a voltage-control input on a VCS3) into a cake, which altered a complex sound on the synthesizer as the size of the cake was reduced by successive slices and one probe needed to be resited (originally carried out by us in the interval of an afternoon rehearsal, using a large cheesecake); a "beer input" for other control voltages; and interconnections to be switched whenever a knife and fork touched. A second project for a future group composition would have involved a live electronic part operated entirely on the mixing desk in a recording studio. Two further group compositions were created. We worked on River Concert as (DartRiverEnvironment) a project with

Davies, Gentle Fire

59

5. Karlheinz

Stockhausen,

From the Seven Days/Aus

den sieben 7agen (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1970) (score collection). 6. Tim Souster, "Intermodulation: a Short History," Contact 17 (Summer 1977) pp. 3-6.

*.

York:Thames & Hudson, 1986) p. 90 (reprinted in

1996 as Dictionary of 20th Century Music).

7. Paul Griffiths, The Thames and Hudson Encyclopaedia of 20th Century Music (London/Nes

8. StuartJones, Graham Hearn and Hugh Davies, "Gentle Fire," in Lucier, ed. [4] pp. 84-87 (scores of Graham Hearn, Drencher;Stuart Jones, I eave to
I.ean To; Hugh Davies, Quintet).

'i

9.John Furnival, Ode,Ceolfrith Press 17-cm LP (PR 1 (included with exh. cat.) (1971). 10. Hugh Davies, "A Simple Ring-Modulator," Musics 6 (February-March 1976) pp. 3-5.

11. Simon Emmerson, "Live Electronic Music in Music Britain: Three Case Studies," Contemporary Review 6, No. 1, 179-195 (1991) (includes a list of about half of the works in Gentle Fire's repertoire). 12. Enmmerson[11]. 13. Michael Robinson, "Gentle Fire: the Group Compositions," unpublished talk broadcast by Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Cologne, 1973.

Fig. 2. Gentle Fire playing the gHong (Akademie der Kiinste, Berlin, 1972), here suspended from a low ceiling rather than on its own stand; from left to right: Richard Bernas, Graham Hearn, Michael Robinson (back to camera), Stuart Jones, Hugh Davies. (Photo ? Petra Grosskopf)

our students at the Dartington Summer School in 1972, in which each musician performed in response to one of several tape loops selected randomly from recordings we had made at different locations along the nearby River Dart. Piano Concert (1973) involved several performers operating inside a piano and with
live electronic treatments.

CONCLUSION
All creative organizations seem to have a natural life of around 7 years, after which substantial renewal is needed if they are to continue. Gentle Fire managed to evolve during the first 5 years of its existence, but a variety of factors, mostly mentioned or implied above, caused the group's gradual demise. After 1972 our earnings from concerts fell sharply, and, due to the decreasing availability of money in the arts, invitations were less common. Hearn and I had already established the principal elements of our careers, but the three other members had not, and needed to explore different potential sources of income [14]. The York members had started out in the group while they were still students, but skill in Gentle Fire's repertoire was not an appropriate qualification for more conventional musical activities at the time. Rehearsals were often awkward to schedule, with two members (later one) living in Yorkshire and the others in London. Finally, none of us had a

vested interest as a composer in making the group central to future compositions, and indeed the cooperative nature of the group would have prevented any member from trying to do so. I have long believed that the future of electronic music would be in live performance, with certain works produced on tape (or digital storage) in a studio because they could not be created in real time. It seems to me, however, that there was a lull in the development of live electronic music after the early 1970s, and the medium only began to revive a decade later, with the introduction of new commercial devices such as digital delays, harmonizers and vocoders (and, later on, samplers) as well as, in certain areas, the early use of microcomputers. Today, of course, live electronic techniques have become widespread in all types and styles of music. References and Notes
1. Hugh Davies, Repertoire international des musiques electroacoustiques/International Electronic Music Catalog

14. Richard Bernas is an orchestral conductor and pianist. I am a freelance composer, performer (often solo), instrunment inventor and researcher. Patrick Harrex is active again as a composer and violinist, having retired from his financial career. Graham Hearn is a college lecturer injazz and contemporary music and a freelance pianist (jazz and related music). Stuart Jones is a freelance composer and performer, collaborator with visual artists producing linear and interactive work, head of New Media Design at Central St. Martins College in London. Richard Orton is a composer and university lecturer (appointed Emeritus Reader after early retirement in 1998), founder member of the Yorkbased Composers Desktop Project and author of the algorithmic composition software Tabula Vigilans. Michael Robinson is a journalist working mostly in television current affairs.

Discography
Furnival, John. Ode, Ceolfrith Press 17-cnl CPR 1
(incl. with exh. cat.John Furnival) (1971).

Gentle Fire. Earle Brown, Four Systems; John Cage,

Music for Amplified Toy Pianos and Music for Carillon

Nos. 1-3 (performer: Graham Hearn); Christian Wolff, Edges. Electrola LP 1C 065-02 469 and Toshiba LP EAC-80295 (1974).
Gentle Fire. Group Composition IV (excerpt) "Live Electronics," Contemporary Music Review 6, No. 1

(cassette incl. with journal) (1991). Orton, Richard. concertmusic 5, 17-cm LP included in book Approach to Music, Vol. 3 (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971). Stockhausen, Karlheinz. Sternklang, Polydor LP 2612031 and DGG LP 2707 123 (2 LPs) (1976); reCD 18A-B issued on Stockhausen Gesamtausgabe (2CDs) (1992) (with 16 other performers).

Music (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968); Electronic Reviewi 2-3 (April-July 1967) (special double issue). 2. In the festival at York University,I also appeared in the Orton/Davies live electronic duo performance of Cage's Electronic Music for Piano.

Manuscript received 6 February 2001.

3. Hugh Davies, "Electronic Music: History and Developmenst," in John Vinton, ed., Dictionaryof ContemporaryMusic (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1974) p.
215 (published in U.K. as Dictionary of 20th Century

Music (I.ondon: Thames & Hudson, 1974). 4. Alvin Lucier, "Gentle Fire," Source:Music of the Avant Garde 10, Alvin Lucier, special issue ed., (1973) pp. 46-49 (score).

Since 1999, Hugh Davies has been a part-time Researcherin Sonic Art at the Centrefor ElectronicArts, Middlesex University,London. His muresearches concentrateon twentieth-century sical instruments and electronicmusic, including chapters in 20 books and exhibition catalogues and contributions to nine dictionaries.

60

I)avies,

Gentle

Fire