Monty Adkins – författare

Gerhard was one of the most visionary composers of the twentieth century drawing together ideas from science, philosophy, and the arts into an oeuvre that encompasses the folk song of his native Catalonia, to serialism and electronic music. The composer lived through some of the most tumultuous times in recent memory including the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War as an exile in England. This edited volume uniquely brings together specialists in Spanish cultural studies, exile, musicology, and analysis to explore how these events and the post-war cultural and political climate shaped Gerhard's life and work.

This Handbook explores and critiques a new sonic reality – one which unearths new narratives that chart embryonic practices from the early twentieth century that have developed in parallel with accepted narratives of electronic music.Today’s musical and artistic practices within technology-based music represent radical changes in production, engagement and dissemination of all sonic arts for composers, musicians, listeners, media content creators and casual music users. Constant everyday exposure to electronic or processed sounds influences our listening skills and listening intentionality, and our ideas of what constitutes valuable sound experiences have expanded radically. What are we listening to? How and why? This new reality is also more inclusive, and technology-borne music now appears as the new folk music – unwritten, improvised and finding its own relevance unfettered by the traditional hierarchies of taste. It is also where black and Asian technology-based experimental music is emerging with its own sonic genealogy, where music is no longer limited to sound only but can be more fruitfully seen as a branch of media arts, combining diverse materials, techniques and tools into more holistic experiences.

More than forty years after the composer's death, the music of Roberto Gerhard (1896-1970) continues to be recorded and performed and to attract international scholarly interest. The Roberto Gerhard Companion is the first full length scholarly work on this composer noted for his sharp intellect and original, exploring mind. This book builds on the outcomes of two recent international conferences and includes contributions by scholars from Spain, the USA and UK. The essays collected here explore themes and trends within Gerhard’s work, using individual or groups of works as case studies. Among the themes presented are the way Gerhard’s work was shaped by his Catalan heritage, his education under Pedrell and Schoenberg, and his very individual reaction to the latter’s teaching and methods, notably Gerhard’s very distinctive approach to serialism. The influence of these and other cultural and literary figures is an important underlying theme that ties essays together. Exiled from Catalonia from 1939, Gerhard spent the remainder of his life in Cambridge, England, composing a string of often ground-breaking compositions, notably the symphonies and concertos composed in the 1950s and 1960s. A particular focus in this book is Gerhard's electronic music. He was a pioneer in this genre and the book will contain the first rigorous studies of this music as well as the first accurate catalogue of this electronic output. His ground-breaking output of incidental music for radio and the stage is also given detailed consideration.

More than forty years after the composer's death, the music of Roberto Gerhard (1896-1970) continues to be recorded and performed and to attract international scholarly interest. The Roberto Gerhard Companion is the first full length scholarly work on this composer noted for his sharp intellect and original, exploring mind. This book builds on the outcomes of two recent international conferences and includes contributions by scholars from Spain, the USA and UK. The essays collected here explore themes and trends within Gerhard’s work, using individual or groups of works as case studies. Among the themes presented are the way Gerhard’s work was shaped by his Catalan heritage, his education under Pedrell and Schoenberg, and his very individual reaction to the latter’s teaching and methods, notably Gerhard’s very distinctive approach to serialism. The influence of these and other cultural and literary figures is an important underlying theme that ties essays together. Exiled from Catalonia from 1939, Gerhard spent the remainder of his life in Cambridge, England, composing a string of often ground-breaking compositions, notably the symphonies and concertos composed in the 1950s and 1960s. A particular focus in this book is Gerhard's electronic music. He was a pioneer in this genre and the book will contain the first rigorous studies of this music as well as the first accurate catalogue of this electronic output. His ground-breaking output of incidental music for radio and the stage is also given detailed consideration.