The concert will include newly restored electronic works by Ernest Berk. Berk was one of the most prolific composers of electronic music in England from the 1950s to the mid-1980s completing over 200 works. After the collapse of the Cologne archive where his works were donated in 2009, painstaking work has been undertaken to preserve the archive’s materials including Berk’s tapes and documents.

Monty Adkins is Professor of Electronic Music at the University of Huddersfield. He has spent a significant part of the last two decades working on the electronic music archives of Roberto Gerhard and Ernest Berk. He is also a composer recently completing an album of electronic works Betrayal of Caerimar for Cryo Chamber (USA) and Glass Feathers for alto saxophone and electronics for Huddersfield Contemporary Records (UK).

Photo credit: Ethan Scorer

Programme - Ernest Berk: A Musical Outsider

Diversed Mind, Op. 109 (1967), 10m28s

In 1968, a landmark concert of British electronic music took place in London at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, featuring works by Delia Derbyshire, Ernest Berk, Tristram Cary, Peter Zinovieff, Daphne Oram and Ivor Walsworth, George Newson, Jacob Meyerowitz, and Alan Suttcliffe. Diversed Mind was Berk's contribution to this concert. The composition is in five sections, each one abstractly related to a state of mind, growing from “deep depression to erratic, high, nervous tension.” The piece fuses the sounds of tone oscillators with manipulations of recorded percussion and physical objects and uses extreme pitch shifting to bring otherwise inaudible sound and timbres into the audible frequency range.

Group Dance I, Op. 81 (1966), 6m27s

Berk completed three works for group dances between December 1966 and January 1967. The first one was given the subtitle “Streaks” which Berk explained: “…derives from streaks of sounds which burst out at strategical moments and are offset by low sounds of either rhythmic or attenuated character.” As such, the piece is structured around the interplay between wild filtered noise bursts and grounded percussive beating noises. 

Janet Calls it Blue Ribbon, Op. 160 (1972), 10m01s

Little is known about Janet Calls it Blue Ribbon other than the fact it was composed in November 1972 for the dancer Janet Andrea. It was composed in his second studio in Dorset Street, a facility which he had augmented significantly with a number of tape machines and sound producing devices.

Against 7/4, Op. 105 (1967), 7m02s

Berk’s original title for Against 7/4 was Vibration. This original title is perhaps a little bit more literal, with vibrato effects used to manipulate the source sounds throughout. Instead, the 7/4 denomination suggests Berk used a strong rhythmic figure as the basis for the work, an expectation he is quick to confound.

Sychrome, Op. 120 (1968), 15m18s

Berk composed Sychrome at the Technische Universität in West Berlin where it was premiered on 9 October 1968 as part of the Demonstration Elektronischer Musik concert. In writing about the piece, Berk it as “a synthesis of tone colour” but there is more to the piece than just the careful construction timbres. Concrete sounds are used to create rhythmic materials throughout, paired synchronously with recordings made from Berk’s tone oscillators, creating a wide variety of different sonic characters that enter into a dialogue with each other. Following its premiere, Berk shortened Sychrome for use as an accompaniment to dance production in May 1969. 60 dancers were involved with the production. The dancers traced the melodies and rhythms of the music in their movements until the siren-like sound entered to signify the end of the work. At this point, all the dancers stretched upwards, at which the lights were turned off, and the dancers were plunged into darkness.