Hugh Davies (composer)

Hugh Seymour Davies (23 April 1943 – 1 January 2005) was a musicologist, composer, and inventor of experimental musical instruments.

History

Davies was born in Exmouth, Devon, England. After attending Westminster School, he studied music at Worcester College, Oxford from 1961 to 1964. Shortly after he travelled to Cologne, Germany to work for Karlheinz Stockhausen as his personal assistant. For two years, he assembled and documented material for Stockhausen's compositions and was a member of his live ensemble.

From 1968 to 1971 Davies played in The Music Improvisation Company. The group's guitarist Derek Bailey later wrote that "the live electronics served to extend the music both forwards and backwards (...) Davies helped to loosen what had been, until his arrival, a perhaps too rarified approach". He was also a member of the group Gentle Fire, active from 1968 to 1975, which specialised in the realisation of indeterminate and mobile scores, as well as verbally formulated intuitive-music compositions (such as Stockhausen's ''Aus den sieben Tagen'') and in the performance of its own Group Compositions.

Davies invented musical instruments that he constructed from household items. Among them was the ''shozyg'', a generic name he used for any instrument housed inside an unusual container. The name is derived from the first of such instruments, which was housed inside the final volume of an encyclopaedia (covering the subjects from ''SHO–'' to ''ZYG–'').

From the 1960s onwards Davies made very significant contributions to the documentation of electronic music history, and in 1968 published a catalogue in which he listed - ostensibly - all the works of electronic music ever composed worldwide. It has been argued that, through his research and documentation, Davies characterised electronic music for the first time as a truly international, interdisciplinary field.

Davies was also a member of the Artist Placement Group during the mid-1970s.

Davies was the founder and first Director of the Electronic Music Studios at Goldsmiths, University of London from 1968 to 1986 and was subsequently a researcher there until 1991.

Davies appeared on the 1988 album Spirit Of Eden by UK group Talk Talk.

Davies had been a part-time Researcher and Lecturer in Sonic Art at the Centre for Electronic Arts, Middlesex University, London from 1999 until the end of his life.

Discography

under own name
*''Shozyg Music For Invented Instruments'' (FMP, 1982)
*''Interplay'' (FMP, 1997)
*''Warming Up With The Iceman'' (Grob, 2001)
*''Sounds Heard'' (FMP, 2002)
*''Tapestries (Five Electronic Pieces)'' (Ants, 2005)
*''Performances 1969 - 1977'' (Another Timbre, 2008)
With Derek Bailey, Evan Parker and Jamie Muir
* ''The Music Improvisation Company'' (ECM, 1970) with Christine Jeffrey
*''The Music Improvisation Company 1968-1971'' (Incus, 1968–71 976
With Gentle Fire
*''Gentle Fire'' PEarle Browne, ''Four Systems''; John Cage, ''Music for Amplified Toy Pianos'' and ''Music for Carillon Nos. 1-3'' (performer: Graham Hearn); Christian Wolff, ''Edges''. (Electrola LP IC 065-02 469 and Toshiba LP EAC-80295 974
*Furnival, John. ''Ode'' 7-cm CPR included with exhibition catalogue''John Furnival'', Ceolfrith Press 1 (1971).
*Gentle Fire. ''Group Composition IV'' (excerpt) assette included with journal ''Live Electronics, Contemporary Music Review,'' 6 No. 1, (1991).
*Gentle Fire. ''Group Composition VI'' (excerpt) D included with journal ''Not Necessarily English Music, Leonardo Music Journal,'' Volume 11, (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2001)
*Orton, Richard. ''concert music 5'', 17cm LP included in book ''Approach to Music'', Vol. 3, (Oxford, UK,: Oxford University Press, 1971)
*Stokhausen, Karlheinz. ''Sternklang'', Polydor LP 2612031 (2 LPs) (1976); re-issued on Stockhausen Gesamtausgabe CD 18A-B (2 CDs) (1992) (with 16 other performers)

References

Further reading

* Mooney, James. 2016. "Technology, Process and Musical Personality in the Music of Stockhausen, Hugh Davies and Gentle Fire". In ''The Musical Legacy of Karlheinz Stockhausen: Looking Back and Forward'', edited by M.J. Grant and Imke Misch, 102–15. Hofheim: Wolke Verlag. .

External links

A concert of music composed by, or related to the work of, Hugh Davies, with a pre-concert talk by Dr James Mooney
*
Neue Instrumente und Klangskulpturen: Ein Überblick
' by Hugh Davies, from "Echoes: The Images of Sound" Het Apollohuis.
*
A Simple Ring-Modulator
' by Hugh Davies, Feb/Mar 1976, Musics.
*
Making and Performing Simple Electroacoustic Instruments
' by Hugh Davies, 1981, Electronic Music for Schools" Richard Orton ed.
*
The Hugh Davies Collection: live electronic music and self-built electro-acoustic musical instruments, 1967–1975
' by James Mooney, Sound and Vision, 2017

1943 births
2005 deaths
People educated at Westminster School, London
Alumni of Worcester College, Oxford
English electronic musicians
People from Exmouth
Musicians from Devon
Pupils of Karlheinz Stockhausen
20th-century British inventors
Incus Records artists
FMR Records artists

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