Tim Souster (29 January 1943 – 1 March 1994) was a British composer and writer on music, best known for his

electronic music Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electro ...

output.

Biography

Education

Born Timothy Andrew James Souster in

Bletchley Bletchley is a constituent town of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England. It is situated in the south-west of Milton Keynes, and is split between the civil parishes of Bletchley and Fenny Stratford and West Bletchley. Bletchley is best know ...

, Buckinghamshire, Souster was educated at

Bedford Modern School Bedford Modern School (often called BMS) is a Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference independent school in Bedford, England. The school has its origins in The Harpur Trust, born from the endowments left by Sir William Harpur in the six ...

(from 1952 through 1961) and

New College, Oxford New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1379 by William of Wykeham in conjunction with Winchester College as its feeder school, New College is one of the oldest colleges at ...

(from 1961 through 1964). His teachers included Bernard Rose,

Sir David Lumsden Sir David James Lumsden (born 19 March 1928) is a musical educator, choirmaster, organist and harpsichordist. After studying music at Cambridge he was a church organist, and later an academic. He was principal of the Royal Scottish Academy of Mus ...

and Egon Wellesz. In 1964, he attended summer courses at

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it the fourth largest city in the state of Hesse ...

taught by

Karlheinz Stockhausen Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groundb ...

, and took composition lessons with Richard Rodney Bennett the following year. Before the end of 1965, Souster was a producer with the

BBC Third Programme The BBC Third Programme was a national radio station produced and broadcast from 1946 until 1967, when it was replaced by Radio 3. It first went on the air on 29 September 1946 and quickly became one of the leading cultural and intellectual f ...

, and put on many performances of

contemporary music Contemporary classical music is classical music composed close to the present day. At the beginning of the 21st century, it commonly referred to the post-1945 modern forms of post-tonal music after the death of Anton Webern, and included se ...

by composers such as

Boulez Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music. Born in Mon ...

, Berio, Barraqué, Cardew,

Feldman Feldman is a German and Ashkenazi Jewish surname. Notable people with the surname include: Academics * Arthur Feldman (born 1949), American cardiologist * David B. Feldman, American psychologist * David Feldman (historian), American historian ...

Henze Henze is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: *Albert Henze (1894–1979), German Wehrmacht general *Frank Henze (born 1977), German slalom canoeist *Gertrud Henze (1901–2014), a German supercentenarian *Gregor Henze, German ...

and Stockhausen. After leaving the BBC in 1967, he began to devote more time to composing and songwriting.

Foray into electronic music

In the late 1960s Souster began experimenting with electronics. His first acknowledged composition involving electronic techniques was ''Titus Groan Music'' (1969) for

wind quintet A wind quintet, also known as a woodwind quintet, is a group of five wind players (most commonly flute, oboe, clarinet, French horn and bassoon). Unlike the string quartet (of 4 string instruments) with its homogeneous blend of sound color, the in ...

ring modulator In electronics, ring modulation is a signal processing function, an implementation of frequency mixing, in which two signals are combined to yield an output signal. One signal, called the carrier, is typically a sine wave or another simple ...

amplifier An amplifier, electronic amplifier or (informally) amp is an electronic device that can increase the magnitude of a signal (a time-varying voltage or current). It may increase the power significantly, or its main effect may be to boost t ...

s and tape. In August of the same year he moved to

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the cit ...

and formed a live-electronic group with Roger Smalley,

Andrew Powell Andrew Powell (born 18 April 1949) is an English musical composer, arranger and performer, born of Welsh parents. He himself moved to Wales in 2003. Early life Powell was born Surrey, England. He began piano lessons at the age of four and late ...

and Robin Thompson called Intermodulation. As well as compositions by Souster and Smalley, the group performed contemporary music by Cardew, Riley, Rzewski, Stockhausen and

Wolff Wolff is a variant of the Wolf surname which is derived from the baptismal names Wolfgang or Wolfram. List of people surnamed Wolff A * Albert Wolff (disambiguation), several people * Alex Wolff, American actor * Alexander Wolff, American writ ...

Later years

In 1971, Souster became a teaching assistant to Stockhausen in

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

, and in 1973 he moved to

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

where he remained for two years. In 1975 Souster returned to England to take up a research fellowship at Keele University. He remained in England for the rest of his life, except for a six-month stint in California in 1978. He died after a brief, sudden illness on 1 March 1994.

Compositions

His concert pieces included ''Triple Music II'' for three orchestras, given at the Proms in 1970 and revised in 1974, ''Song of an Average City'' for small orchestra and tape, conducted by

Pierre Boulez Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music. Born in Mo ...

at the Roundhouse in 1974, and a Trumpet Concerto (1988) for John Wallace and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. In the 1980s and 1990s Souster wrote music for film and television, including music for ''

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' (sometimes referred to as ''HG2G'', ''HHGTTG'', ''H2G2'', or ''tHGttG'') is a comedy science fiction franchise created by Douglas Adams. Originally a 1978 radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4, it ...

'', for which he also arranged the main theme, a version of "

Journey of the Sorcerer "Journey of the Sorcerer" is an instrumental by the American rock band Eagles. It appeared on their 1975 album ''One of These Nights'' and was later used as the theme tune to the BBC comedy/science fiction franchise ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the ...

" by

The Eagles The Eagles are an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1971. With five number-one singles and six number-one albums, six Grammy Awards and five American Music Awards, the Eagles were one of the most successful musical acts of the 1970s ...

. His music for the BBC drama miniseries '' The Green Man'', adapted from the

Kingsley Amis Sir Kingsley William Amis (16 April 1922 – 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, short stories, radio and television scripts, and works of social ...

novel and starring

Albert Finney Albert Finney (9 May 1936 – 7 February 2019) was an English actor. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and worked in the theatre before attaining prominence on screen in the early 1960s, debuting with '' The Entertainer'' (1960 ...

, won the BAFTA award for best TV music of 1990. During this period, Souster composed a large amount of concert music. He wrote a number of important works for brass and electronics including ''Equalisation'' (1980) for Equale Brass and ''Echoes'' (1990). His last completed work was ''La marche'' (1993), a

brass Brass is an alloy of copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn), in proportions which can be varied to achieve different mechanical, electrical, and chemical properties. It is a substitutional alloy: atoms of the two constituents may replace each other wi ...

quintet.

Writings

In addition to his activities as a composer and performer, Souster published a large number of articles about music .

References

Cited sources

* * *

External links

Official Tim Souster Web Site

Tim Souster Published Works at Composers Edition

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Souster, Tim 1943 births 1994 deaths People educated at Bedford Modern School 20th-century classical composers English classical composers Alumni of New College, Oxford People from Bletchley Pupils of Karlheinz Stockhausen 20th-century English composers English male classical composers 20th-century British male musicians Classical musicians associated with the BBC