Frank Denyer (born April 12, 1943 in
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
) is a
composer
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music.
Etymology and Defi ...
. His music uses a combination of conventional instruments and new, unusual, and structurally modified instruments. Partly due to his studies of non-Western music, much of Denyer's music is
microtonal
Microtonal music or microtonality is the use in music of microtones—intervals smaller than a semitone, also called "microintervals". It may also be extended to include any music using intervals not found in the customary Western tuning of tw ...
.
Biography
Denyer was a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral and later studied at the Guildhall in London. In 1966 he co-founded, and was director of, the Society of Hermes, an arts club for new music, painting, poetry and theatre in Shepherds Bush, London. He formed and directed Mouth of Hermes. a professional instrumental ensemble devoted to new and experimental forms of music. He toured widely with the ensemble in Europe, Scandinavia and the U.K. in the years up to 1974, presenting new compositions. During this time he was Lecturer in Composition and 20th Century Studies at Hornsey College of Art. This early period culminated in his being a featured composer/performer at the Festival d’Orleans, France, in 1973.
Denyer left the UK for a time in 1974 to begin what he calls his "musical travels", and to undertake his first attempts at ethnomusicological fieldwork (in west Asia and the Kulu Valley in north India). In the summer of 1974 he was a Visiting lecturer at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India. Between 1974 and 1977 he was a PhD student in Ethnomusicology at
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Epis ...
in
Connecticut
Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its cap ...
. Thereafter he was Research Fellow in African Music at the Institute of African Studies,
University of Nairobi
, mottoeng = In unity and work
, image = Uon emblem.gif
, image_size = 210px
, caption = Coat of Arms of the University
, type = Public
, endowment ...
, Kenya, and then Lecturer in Ethnomusicology at Kenyatta University College in Nairobi. The impact of these studies on his subsequent musical output is profound, but Denyer has never been interested in hybridization or "crossover". Upon his return to England in 1981 he began teaching at
Dartington College of Arts
Dartington College of Arts was a specialist arts college located at Dartington Hall in the south-west of England, offering courses at degree and postgraduate level together with an arts research programme. It existed for a period of almost 50 ...
in Devon, where he was a Professor of Composition until the college merged with University College Falmouth in 2010. Together with
James Fulkerson James Orville Fulkerson (born July 2, 1945, in Streator, Illinois) is an American composer, now living in the Netherlands, of mostly stage, orchestral, chamber, vocal, piano, Electroacoustic music, electroacoustic, and multimedia works. He is also a ...
co-founded the
Barton Workshop in Amsterdam in 1990 to perform American experimental music and his own compositions; his recordings of the solo piano music and ensemble works of
Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman (January 12, 1926 – September 3, 1987) was an American composer. A major figure in 20th-century classical music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School ...
,
Galina Ustvolskaya
Galina Ivanovna Ustvolskaya (russian: Гали́на Ива́новна Уство́льская , 17 June 1919 – 22 December 2006), was a Russian composer of classical music.
Early years
Born in Petrograd, Ustvolskaya studied from 1937 to 1 ...
,
Christian Wolff,
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading fi ...
,
Jerry Hunt
Jerry Edward Hunt (November 30, 1943 – November 27, 1993) was an American composer who created works using live electronics partly controlled by his ritualistic performance techniques which were influenced by his interest in the occult. He was ...
,
James Tenney
James Tenney (August 10, 1934 – August 24, 2006) was an American composer and music theorist. He made significant early musical contributions to plunderphonics, sound synthesis, algorithmic composition, process music, spectral music, microtonal ...
,
Alvin Lucier
Alvin Augustus Lucier Jr. (May 14, 1931 – December 1, 2021) was an American composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. A long-time music professor at Wesleyan University in Mi ...
and others have met with wide acclaim.
Denyer's music has remained resolutely independent of musical fashion. An early interest in melody in the 1970s has remained a feature of his work (as seen perhaps in its most extreme form in his works for
shakuhachi
A is a Japanese and ancient Chinese longitudinal, end-blown flute that is made of bamboo.
The bamboo end-blown flute now known as the was developed in Japan in the 16th century and is called the . , collected on the 2007 CD ''Music for shakuhachi''
ee Discography. His music shows an extraordinary ear for timbre, and for novel combinations of acoustic sounds. The first of his large-scale works, ''A Monkey's Paw'' (premiered at
Darmstadt
Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it th ...
in 1990; see Discography) displays this clearly. More recently an interest in extremely quiet sounds has characterised several works, including ''Prison Song'', ''Faint Traces'' and ''Tentative Thoughts, Silenced Voices'' (collectively forming his ''Prison Trilogy'' (1999–2003)).
Compositions for shakuhachi
Though not a
shakuhachi
A is a Japanese and ancient Chinese longitudinal, end-blown flute that is made of bamboo.
The bamboo end-blown flute now known as the was developed in Japan in the 16th century and is called the . player himself, Denyer has collaborated with
Yoshikazu Iwamoto to write pieces for the instrument, including:
* ''After the Rain''
* ''Wheat''
* ''The Tender Sadness of Tyrants as They Dance''
* ''Stalks''
* ''Winged Play''
* ''Unnamed''
Discography
* ''Silenced Voices''. Mode, 2008 (includes ''Woman, Viola and Crow; Two Beacons; Ghosts Again; Tentative Thoughts, Silenced Voices'' )
* ''Music for Shakuhachi''.
Another Timbre Another Timbre is a record label, based in Sheffield and known for its releases of free improvisation, experimental and contemporary classical music. It was founded by television sound recordist Simon Reynell, who also engineers and produces most ...
, 2007 (includes ''On, on - it must be so; Quite White; Wheat; Unnamed'')
* ''Faint Traces''. Mode, 2005 (includes ''Out of the Shattered Shadows 1; Out of the Shattered Shadows 2; Faint Traces; Music for Two Performers; Play; Passages'')
* ''Fired City''. Tzadik, 2002 (includes ''Towards the Darkness; Beneath the Fired City; Quick, Quick, the Tamberan is Coming; The Hanged Fiddler; Resonances of Ancient Sins; Prison Song'')
* ''Finding Refuge in the Remains''. Etcetera, 1998 (includes ''Finding Refuge in the Remains; Quartet; Frog; Archeology; Contained in a Strange Garden; The Tender Sadness of Tyrants as They Dance'')
* ''The Contrabass Saxophone''. Earup, 1996 (includes ''Resonances of Ancient Sins'')
* ''Konink & Andriessen: Notes 94''. Walpurgis, 1994 (includes ''Beneath the Fired City'')
* ''A Monkey's Paw''. Continuum, 1991 (includes ''Stalks; After the Rain; A Fragile Thread; A Monkey's Paw; Winged Play'')
* ''Wheat: The Music of Frank Denyer''. Orchid Records, 1984 (includes ''On, On, it must be so; I Await the Sea’s Red Hibiscus; Wheat; Quick, Quick, the Tamberan is Coming; Quite White; Voices'')
Writings and interviews
Interview with Frank Denyer (2007) by Dan Warburtonin Paris Transatlantic Magazine
* Denyer, Frank (ed.) & Landy, Leigh (ed.). ''Leaving the Twentieth Century: Ideas & Visions of New Musics''. Harwood Academic Pub., 1997. .
* Denyer, Frank. ''Finding a Voice in an Age of Migration'' (1994) in ''Contemporary Music Review'', 1996, vol. 15, nos 3-4.
* Denyer, Frank. ''The Shakuhachi and the Contemporary Music Instrumentarium: a Personal View'' (1991) in ''Contemporary Music Review'', 1994, vol. 6, no. 2.
External links
FrankDenyer.eu*
Frank Denyer at 60: Butterfly effect' (article from ''Musical Times'', 2003)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Denyer, Frank
English classical composers
Microtonal composers
Wesleyan University alumni
Tzadik Records artists
1943 births
Living people
English male classical composers
20th-century English composers
20th-century British male musicians