Unless you were the kind of super-connoisseur of the avant-garde to collect records on labels like Incus or Brian Eno's Obscure Records in the 1970s, chances are you've never heard very much of Gavin Bryars' early musical efforts. One of them, however, has become better known through a lucky coincidence; a slightly revised version of his then nearly three-decades-old composition The Sinking of the Titanic became sort of a classical "hit" when issued in 1997 amidst the furore attendant to James Cameron's film Titanic. Bryars ...
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Unless you were the kind of super-connoisseur of the avant-garde to collect records on labels like Incus or Brian Eno's Obscure Records in the 1970s, chances are you've never heard very much of Gavin Bryars' early musical efforts. One of them, however, has become better known through a lucky coincidence; a slightly revised version of his then nearly three-decades-old composition The Sinking of the Titanic became sort of a classical "hit" when issued in 1997 amidst the furore attendant to James Cameron's film Titanic. Bryars early works were highly loose in terms of form, often consisting of no more than verbal instructions to aid their realization or consisting of a computer printout of dots and dashes. Inspired by his participation in the Scratch Orchestra and Portsmouth Sinfonia and the influence of arch-English avant-gardist Cornelius Cardew, Bryars washed his hands of such music in 1972 and did not resume composition until 1975. From that time forward, Bryars pursued the conventionally notated,...
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