RT Journal Article T1 The Hugh Davies Collection: live electronic music and self-built electro-acoustic musical instruments, 1967-1975 A1 James Mooney YR 2017 VO Special Issue: Sound and Vision IS Spring 2017 K1 critical organology K1 DIY K1 experimental musical instruments K1 Hugh Davies K1 live electronic music K1 material culture K1 Science Museum AB The Hugh Davies Collection (HDC) at the Science Museum in London comprises 42 items of electronic sound apparatus owned by English experimental musician Hugh Davies (1943–2005), including self-built electro-acoustic musical instruments and modified sound production and manipulation hardware. An early proponent of ‘live electronic music’ (performed live on stage rather than constructed on magnetic tape in a studio), Davies’s DIY approach shaped the development of experimental and improvised musics from the late 1960s onwards. However, his practice has not been widely reported in the literature, hence little information is readily available about the material artefacts that constituted and enabled it. This article provides the first account of the development of Davies’s practice in relation to the objects in the HDC: from the modified electronic sound apparatus used in his early live electronic compositions (among the first of their kind by a British composer); through the ‘instrumental turn’ represented by his first self-built instrument, Shozyg I (1968); to his mature practice, where self-built instruments like Springboard Mk. XI (1974) replaced electronic transformation as the primary means by which Davies explored new and novel sound-worlds. As well as advancing knowledge of Davies’s pioneering work in live electronics and instrument-building and enhancing understanding of the objects in the HDC, this article shows how object biographic and archival methodologies can be combined to provide insight into the ways in which objects (instruments, technologies) and practices shape each other over time. NO According to Davies himself, live electronic music was ‘nonexistent’ in Britain prior to 1968 – the year in which the Davies/Orton duo, and later, Gentle Fire, were formed (Davies, 2001, pp 53–54). It is possible that the British-based ensemble AMM, founded in 1965, may have used live electronic techniques in its improvised performances prior to this. However, as Emmerson has noted, although AMM may have ‘integrat[ed] electronic distortion and amplification as “instrumental extensions” within an often predominantly acoustic framework’ (Emmerson, 1991, p 180, emphasis added), the group’s primary focus was free improvisation rather than live electronics per se. The Davies/Orton duo, on the other hand, focused primarily on the performance of music that could only be performed by live electronic means. NO Davies’s own accounts of his work are at least 15 years old, and some appeared in fairly esoteric publications (e.g. Davies, 1997). His collected writings, Sounds Heard, documents his work in live electronics and instrument-building only briefly/non-comprehensively (Davies, 2002b). Only one short article on Davies’s work with Gentle Fire could nowadays be considered widely and easily available (Davies, 2001). Apart from Davies’s own writings, Roberts (1977) has documented Davies’s work as an instrument-builder in the now hard-to-obtain journal Contact, while Emmerson (1991) has discussed Davies’s work with Gentle Fire as one of three brief case studies of live electronic music in Britain. Palermo’s doctoral study (2015) provides an overview of Davies’s creative output from 1960 to 2002, and as such is broader in chronological scope – and correspondingly less detailed – than the present study. Finally, although Davies’s work is mentioned in several of the more general historic accounts of electronic, experimental, and improvised musics (and some of these even recognise or allude to the pioneering status of Davies’s work), the mentions are invariably extremely brief and not the main focus of the discussion (e.g. Bailey, 1993; Chadabe, 1997; Collins, 2009; Holmes, 2012; Gottschalk, 2016). Of course, none of the aforementioned publications focuses directly upon documenting the specific set of objects that constitute the Hugh Davies Collection. NO The main sources for this study have been: Davies’s own writings, published and unpublished; archival documents held in the Hugh Davies Manuscripts (HDM) and Hugh Davies Recordings (HDR) archives at the British Library, London; and (to a lesser extent) documents held at the Stockhausen Foundation archive (SF) in Kürten, Germany. Above all, details of the development of Davies’s practice – particularly in relation to its material aspects – have been gleaned from objects in the HDC at the Science Museum, in effect by using the objects themselves as evidence. NO Alberti (2005) has argued, echoing like-minded anthropologists (Appadurai, 1988) and historians of science (Daston, 2000), that objects ‘accrue meaning and identity’ in the various stages of their existence, ‘from manufacture or growth through collecting and exchange to the museum’. However, since the ‘objects themselves are mute’, he continues, much of this meaning can remain hidden; historians can thus help to ‘give these objects voices’ by reconstructing their ‘biographies’ from archival and other sources (Alberti, 2005, pp 565, 559, 571). This is essentially the approach taken in this article. NO Musique concrète refers to the use of real-world recorded sounds as musical material, a practice generally traced to the work of Pierre Schaeffer at the French radio and TV studio ORTF in Paris in the late 1940s. Elektronische Musik refers to the use of (typically) electronically generated sounds, as practiced by Herbert Eimert, Robert Beyer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and others, at the West German radio station NWDR in the early 1950s. These approaches differed in their aesthetic underpinnings, but both used magnetic tape as their medium. A useful summary is provided by Manning (2013; see chapters 2 and 3). NO A useful reference on the techniques and technologies of electronic music as they were at the beginning of the 1960s is provided by Judd (1961). NO The title of this section echoes the title of an article published by Davies (1968d). NO At the time of writing, this film is available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhXU7wQCU0Y [accessed 29 January 2017] NO A ring-modulator is a simple electronic circuit that combines two sound signals in a particular way, transforming the characteristics of the sound in the process. Typically, one of the sound sources is complex – a vocal or instrumental sound, for instance – while the other is simpler, such as the signal produced by an electronic sine wave generator. A well-known example of ring modulation is the Dalek voice in the Dr Who television series, which was produced by ring-modulating a normal human voice (transduced via microphone) and an electronically produced sine wave. NO Impressed with the results, Davies noted in his diary: ‘when will we be able to do this in England?’ NO Scored for five performers, five microphones, sine/square-wave generator, four-channel switching unit, potentiometers, amplifiers, and six loudspeakers. The slightly cryptic subtitle ‘Alstrabal……’ – read the word backwards – refers to the Arts Lab, where Davies worked as concerts director. NO When a microphone, amplifier, and loudspeaker are connected together, microphone feedback will occur when the level of amplification is sufficient to produce an infinite loop of amplification. When this occurs accidentally, it usually results in an uncontrolled howling or squealing sound, but given the correct conditions this technique can also be used to produce a continuous tone whose pitch can (more or less) be controlled by adjusting the position of the microphone relative to the loudspeaker. If the sound generated by an electronic sine/square wave generator is projected via the loudspeaker at the same time as it is producing acoustic feedback, then the generator sounds and the feedback sounds will interact with each other. The effect is similar in principle to ring-modulation—i.e. it is as though the feedback sounds are being ring-modulated with the generator sounds – except that the modulation occurs without the use of a ring-modulator circuit. It is this technique that is used in Quintet. NO Scored for six performers. Davies’s typewritten equipment list specifies: two ½-track stereo tape recorders, two stereo mixers, four-channel switching unit, four-channel photocell divider, two sine/square-wave generators, two ring-modulators, two stereo amplifiers, four loudspeakers, two stereo headphones (optional), one fuzz box or similar device (optional), and ‘various small “instruments”, specially constructed, fitted with contact microphones etc.’ (Davies, 1968a) NO This was an electronic device comprising four light-sensitive cells, upon which a torchlight could be trained in order to distribute sound among four loudspeakers. NO Davies’s typewritten equipment list for the piece prescribes ‘2 stereo mixers, or similar equipment permitting individual volume control of 4 input channels and if possible an ON/OFF switch for each (e.g. Uher A-121 stereo mixer)’, after which a handwritten note has been added: ‘a variable preamplification stage may be required to match the output of these mixers to the input of the stereo amplifiers’ (Davies, 1968a). NO Scored for solo performer, record player, two-channel pulsing unit and electronic equipment. The unusual title is ‘a “found” title from the side of a railway wagon’ (Davies, 2002b, p 77), which, according to the score ‘has no relevance in making the recording or in a performance’ (Davies, 1969). NO At the time this piece was composed, such booths were reasonably common, and could be found in public spaces such as train stations. NO Instructions describing the required recording were later issued by Davies as a separate composition, Voice (1969), which is published as part of Davies’s collected writings (Davies, 2002b, p 77). NO The dials, when rotated, introduce brief silence gaps into the sound as they return to their ‘zero’ positions – one gap when dialling 1; two gaps when dialling 2; and so on – such that a range of stuttering effects can be produced by varying the speed and frequency of dial rotation. NO The amplified found objects used in Galactic Interfaces were referred to by Davies in his performance instruction as ‘“instruments”’ – with scare quotes – suggesting that he did not consider them to be musical instruments in the fullest sense. Shozyg I and Shozyg II, however, were clearly and unambiguously described by Davies as instruments – without the scare quotes. The distinction is subtle, but important, since it evidences a change in the way that Davies thought about the material artefacts that mediated his practice. NO The names ‘Shozyg I’ and ‘Shozyg II’ were used by Davies to refer both to the instruments themselves, and to the three compositions just mentioned. For clarity, the titles of compositions are given in italics (as is conventional in musicology), whereas the names of musical instruments are not italicised; thus, Shozyg I refers to the instrument, while Shozyg I refers to the composition of the same name. NO This section heading reflects the title of an essay by Roberts (1977). NO Bell has suggested that ‘there is a good reason for considering [Davies’s self-built instruments’ as compositions in their own right, since in effect the construction of the instrument determined the way in which a performance was executed’ (Bell, 2009, p 241). NO Details of the ring-modulator circuit used were later published by Davies (1976). NO At the time of writing, the author has not conclusively determined whether the Stringboard in the HDC is Mk. I or Mk. II. NO A fourth Springboard – Mk. IX – was also built in 1974; this featured ‘a single “endless” spring […] subdivided into six different lengths’ (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, 1975). NO Davies’s text score for Gentle Springs lists a dozen different Springboard models: Mk. I through Mk. XI, plus ‘Springboard Mk. 0’ – loose springs with an electromagnetic pickup. Springstring is not mentioned in the score, suggesting that Davies did not consider it properly part of the Springboard family (Davies, 1972). PB The Science Museum Group SN 2054-5770 LA eng DO 10.15180/170705 UL https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/hugh-davies-collection/ WT Science Museum Group Journal OL 30