No More Songs: Henry Cow and British Experimental Music, 1968-1980

《No More Songs》通过亨利·考（Henry Cow）合奏团的镜头，讲述了20世纪70年代英国实验音乐的历史。1968年5月，两名剑桥大学的本科生组成了Henry Cow乐队，乐队存在了十年，创作了20世纪70年代一些最复杂、最多样、最富有想象力的音乐。该乐队由十多位音乐家组成，但最稳定的成员包括多乐器演奏家弗雷德·弗里思、萨克斯手和键盘手蒂姆·霍奇金森、打击乐手克里斯·卡特勒、贝斯手约翰·格里夫斯、双簧管手和巴松手林赛·库珀、歌手达格玛·克劳斯和贝斯手乔治娜·伯恩。它的音乐风格多种多样：精确、电气化的室内乐；有伴奏的爵士独奏；狂野的集体即兴表演；现场电子音乐和工作室实验；有节奏推进的岩石；艺术和歌舞歌曲；以及包括几种或所有这些风格的多区域套房。虽然他们发行了几张专辑，但Henry Cow主要是一个表演团体，并在欧洲和斯堪的纳维亚半岛进行了广泛的巡演，在那里他们发现了热情的观众和志同道合的音乐家，他们在传统音乐流派之间工作。亨利奶牛和它的前成员录制和演出与各种各样的音乐家。在摇滚界，他们的合作伙伴包括Soft Machine的Robert Wyatt、Egg的Dave Stewart、Mike Oldfield、Captain Beefheart、Faust、the Residents和Brian Eno。乐队聘请的受过古典音乐训练的作曲家包括罗杰·斯莫里、海纳·戈培尔、迈克尔·尼曼和科尼利厄斯·卡杜。与Henry Cow成员合作的受人尊敬的即兴演奏家包括Derek Bailey， Lol Coxhill, Annemarie Roelofs, Steve Beresford, Irene Schweizer, Phil Minton, Maggie Nichols, Sally Potter， Zeena Parkins和芝加哥艺术团。这种广泛的文化生产网络证明了英国实验主义特征的附属物网络。Henry Cow乐队的成员经常谈到他们在20世纪50年代和60年代对美国实验音乐的感激。这些跨大西洋的联系源于三个方面：约翰·凯奇和他在纽约市中心的后继者，奥尔内特·科尔曼和自由爵士运动，以及弗兰克·扎帕（Frank Zappa）和Beefheart船长（Captain Beefheart）的冒险摇滚乐团。因此，这项研究的一个核心问题是，Henry Cow及其广泛的合作者是如何接受这些美国音乐传统并将其改编以适应英国文化背景的。然而，这个项目不会局限于接收问题，因为它的总体目标是记录和分析20世纪70年代英国实验音乐的整个领域。爵士乐手、摇滚乐手、即兴乐手和作曲家是如何相互影响的？虽然亨利·考演奏了许多全作曲和记谱音乐，但其主要的音乐实践是即兴创作。与许多同时代的英国自由即兴乐坛不同，乐队经常在自发的音乐创作中加入可识别的舔舐和vamps，在乐队对话中为音乐的历史和风格创造空间。这种参照是自由即兴运动的诅咒，自由即兴运动更倾向于从他们的演奏中清除所有可识别的音乐符号，以寻找一种“空白”状态，这种状态可以调节团队的互动。我将试图进一步研究即兴创作在英国各种自发音乐创作场景中所获得的不同含义，以及不同的音乐主角——摇滚乐队、“自由”乐团和训练过的作曲家——在这一时期认为他们可以通过转向即兴创作而获得什么。

No More Songs writes a history of British experimental music in the 1970s through the lens of the ensemble Henry Cow. Formed by two Cambridge University undergraduates in May 1968, Henry Cow existed for ten years, producing some of the most complex, varied, and imaginative music of the 1970s. The group cycled through more than ten musicians in various combinations, but its steadiest membership included multi-instrumentalist Fred Frith, saxophonist and keyboard player Tim Hodgkinson, percussionist Chris Cutler, bassist John Greaves, oboist and bassoonist Lindsay Cooper, vocalist Dagmar Krause, and bassist Georgina Born. Its music ranged widely across different styles: precise, electrified chamber music; jazzy solos with accompaniment; wild group improvisations; live electronic music and studio experimentation; rhythmically propulsive rock; art and cabaret songs; and multi-sectional suites comprising several or all of these styles. Although they released several albums, Henry Cow was primarily a performing ensemble, and toured extensively throughout Europe and Scandinavia, where they found enthusiastic audiences and likeminded musicians working in the spaces between traditional musical genres. Henry Cow and its former members recorded and performed with a wide variety of musicians. In the rock world, their partners included Robert Wyatt of Soft Machine, Dave Stewart of Egg, Mike Oldfield, Captain Beefheart, Faust, the Residents, and Brian Eno. Among the classically trained composers with whom the band engaged were Roger Smalley, Heiner Goebbels, Michael Nyman, and Cornelius Cardew. The list of well respected improvisers who collaborated with members of Henry Cow included Derek Bailey, Lol Coxhill, Annemarie Roelofs, Steve Beresford, Irene Schweizer, Phil Minton, Maggie Nichols, Sally Potter, Zeena Parkins, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. This broad network of cultural production evidences a web of attachments characteristic of British experimentalism. The members of Henry Cow often remarked on their indebtedness to American experimental music in the 1950s and 1960s. These transatlantic connections originated in three sources: John Cage and his successors in the downtown New York milieu, Ornette Coleman and the free jazz movement, and the adventurous rock-identified ensembles of Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart. A central issue for this study, then, is how Henry Cow, as well as its wide range of collaborators, received these American musical traditions and adapted them to fit into a British cultural context. This project will not, however, limit itself to matters of reception, for its overall goal is to document and analyse the entire field of British experimental music in the 1970s. In what ways did the jazzers, rockers, improvisers, and composers interact with each other? Although Henry Cow performed many pieces of through-composed and notated music, its prevailing musical practice was improvisation. Unlike many of their contemporaries in the British free improvisation scene, the band often added recognizable licks and vamps into its spontaneous music making, creating space in its group dialogues for a sense of musical history and style. This kind of referentiality was anathema to the free improvisation movement, which was more invested in purging all recognizable musical signs from their playing in search of a 'blank slate' state that could condition the interactions of the group. I will seek to investigate further the different meanings that improvisation acquired for the various scenes of spontaneous music-making in the UK, and what different musical protagonists-rock bands, 'free' music ensembles, and trained composers-felt they could gain by turning to improvisation in this period.