Barry Anderson (composer)

Michael Barrie Gordon Anderson, known as Barry Anderson, was a New Zealand-born composer, teacher, and pioneer in the dissemination of electroacoustic music in the United Kingdom. Internationally, his best-known work is his realisation of the electronic music for Harrison Harrison Birtwistle's opera The Mask of Orpheus.

Biography

Anderson was born in Stratford, New Zealand, in 1935. His father was a civil engineer and his mother played the piano as an amateur to a high level. Anderson learned the piano and performed in New Zealand. In 1952, he won a scholarship at London's Royal Academy of Music, where he studied piano and viola. Additional piano studies were with Edwin Fischer, as well as masterclasses with Alfred Brendel and Paul Badura-Skoda. After leaving the Royal Academy of Music, Anderson remained in the UK and taught piano privately, and later at the South Bank Institute, Goldsmiths' College and City Literary Institute in London, on a part-time basis.
During the 1960s he became increasingly interested in composition; and particularly with electronics after having heard Stockhausen's Kontakte, an experience which he said "changed the direction of his musical life". In 1971, he began to work full-time at the South Bank Institute. He set up an electronic music studio at West Square in South London. In 1975, he founded the West Square Electronic Music Ensemble, which commissioned several new works with electronics, some being broadcast on BBC Radio 3.
In 1979, he co-founded the Electro-Acoustic Music Association of Great Britain. Between 1982 and 1985 he realised the electronic material for Harrison Birtwistle's opera The Mask of Orpheus at IRCAM in Paris, to great acclaim. The work won the 1987 Grawemeyer Award for music composition, although Anderson was not mentioned in the citation. After completing The Mask of Orpheus, he reduced his teaching work to concentrate on composition, and completed a chamber work, ARC.
Anderson died in Paris on 27 May 1987 of heart failure, shortly after the premiere of ARC. At 52 years old he was on the cusp of recognition as an electroacoustic composer of international stature. In the words of fellow New-Zealander and electroacoustic composer Denis Smalley, Anderson “was cut off in his prime”.

Recordings

Mask, Songs Penyeach, Sound the Tucket Sonance and the Note to Mount, Colla Voce Electroacoustic Fanfare, ARC, Piano Piece No.1, Piano Piece No.2, Piano Piece No.3, Domingus The Mask of Orpheus electronic music

Works

Anderson completed around 20 works.

Maui full-length opera based on Polynesian legends of the Pacific
Sound Frames for instrumental ensemble
Songs Penyeach for mezzo-soprano, amplified violin, bass clarinet, and percussion
Piano Pieces 1,2,3 for piano, tape mix, and sine tone ring modulation
Topograph for 3 percussion groups, filters, and ring modulators
Synt Axis-Mix The Menace of the Flower for 8-channel tape mix
Suntame setting of Maori creation myths for a storyteller, tape mix, electronics, piano, and percussion
Make for solo flautist, electronic modulation, percussion, speaker, and 5 tape channels, stage and lighting schedule; text by Paul Hyland
En Face De...1 for soprano and double bass
En Face De...2 for soprano and double bass with tape delay, electronic modulation, and 4-channel tape
Colla Voce for solo soprano
Domingus electro-acoustic tape realization of poem cycle, Domingus by Paul Hyland
Proscenium for solo percussion, electronic modulation, tape delay, and 2-channel tape
Sound The Tucket Sonance And The Note To Mount for solo trombone and 2-channel tape
Electro-Acoustic Fanfare for 2-channel tape
Windows for sound and vision—2-channel tape and slide projections
ARC for string quartet, bass clarinet, computer-generated and processed sound tapes

Collaborations

The Mask of Orpheus realization of the electronic music for the opera
6 realizations of Stockhausen's SOLO for melody instrument and feedback system: for flute, for double bass, for voice, for oboe, for bass clarinet,