Composer Jonathan Harvey has died. Quietly spoken,
Harvey was the first British composer to make a lasting impression
on a Central European contemporary music scene that was
traditionally ignored by the British classical mainstream.
Born in Sutton Coldfield in 1939, Harvey spent his
former years as a chorister, and was mentored by Benjamin Britten.
He was a professional cellist for a spell, and considered it the
most human of instruments, composing a number of solo works for
cello.
In 1966 he visited Darmstadt and encountered
Karlheinz Stockhausen both as a composer and a personality, an
experience which proved epiphanic. From that moment, Harvey began
incorporating Central European ideas and attitudes into his still
recognisably English compositions.
In 1980 he was invited to the electronic music studio
IRCAM by its founder Pierre Boulez. Whilst there, Harvey assembled
Mortuos Plango Vivos Voco, an eight track tape piece often
cited as a modern classic, which combined the sound of his young
son's treble voice with the tolling of the bell of Winchester
Cathedral.
Harvey continued to refine his use of electronic
elements in Ritual Melodies (1989–90), and Bhakti
(1982), composed for chamber orchestra and quadrophonic tape. The
latter, a mystical exploration of Sanskrit hymns of the Rig Veda,
was a testament to his obsession with Eastern spirituality and
Buddhism.
In The Wire
282, Philip Clark wrote: "Often the gauze-like basting of his
acoustic music (and there's lots of it – orchestral pieces, string
quartets and instrumental music) feels like it's been refracted
through an electronic filter embedded inside Harvey's brain."
Harvey was composer in residence with the BBC
Scottish Symphony Orchestra between 2005 and 2008, and was composer
in residence at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 2009.
He was professor of music at Sussex University from 1977 to 1993,
then at Stanford University from 1995 to 2000.
