Michael Nyman | Bentham & Hooker

Michael Nyman

Bentham & Hooker

Cullompton, Devon : Beau Geste Press, 1973

[106] pp,  15 cm., softcover

Edition of 100

Michael Nyman is best known for the multi-platinum selling soundtrack to Jane Campion's award winning 1993 film The Piano. Before that he was the celebrated composer of scores for over a decade of Peter Greenaway feature films: The Draughtsman's Contract (1982),  A Zed & Two Noughts (1985), Drowning by Numbers (1988), The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) and Prospero's Books (1991)1. 

Prior to this he was known as a music critic. His 1968 article in The Spectator magazine about Cornelius Cardew is the first published work to use the term "minimalism" in relation to music. His 1974 book Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond explored the influence of John Cage on contemporary music and visual art (an entire chapter is dedicated to Fluxus, for example). 

In 1976 he released his first recording, Decay Music, on Brian Eno's short-lived by highly influential Obscure Records2. Considered a compositional breakthrough for Nyman, Decay Music was a kind of conceptual exercise borrowed from Morton Feldmann. One hundred piano chords are played - from the top of the piano to the bottom - and the performer can only play the next chord when the first has stopped ringing out. 

Bentham & Hooker arrived three years prior, and this biographical preamble is precisely because I can find absolutely no information about the title. 

The auction site offering it for sale (along with two other Beau Geste Press titles) lists only the following sentence: Mimeographed poetic experiment by the composer and music critic. 

Bentham & Hooker is a taxonomic system for seed plants, dating back to the mid-19th century. The British botanists George Bentham (1800–1884) and Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911) developed the system based on the principle of natural affinities. As it predates Darwinism,  it does not take evolution into account. 

It's easy to see how Nyman's interest in process and minimalism could collide in a work inspired by the Bentham & Hooker system. 

I once mentioned an Aphex Twin work that I couldn't confirm the existence of and Robin Rimbaud (who produces work under the name of Scanner) reached out with both information and images. If anyone can provide the same for this Nyman title produced in such a small edition size - fifty years ago! - I'd be grateful. 

1. Nyman was unavailable to score Greenaway's The Belly of an Architect in 1987, so Wim Mertens (whose 1983 book on Minimalism featured a forward by Nyman) took over, with a soundtrack of very Nyman-esque music. 

2. The series of ten Obscure Records also featured classics like Gavin Bryars' The Sinking of the Titanic (b/w with another classic: Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet), Eno's best ambient work Discreet Music, the debut LP from the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, as well as discs by Harold Budd, John Cage, David Toop and others. 

Michael Nyman | Decay Music

Michael Nyman

Decay Music

London, UK: Obscure/Island Records, 1976

49:53 12" LP

Edition size unknown

Three of the ten releases from Obscure Records (1975 to 1978) are among my very favourite albums of all time. This isn't one of them, but it is a solid entry in the series. 

Decay Music is the first LP release by the critic/composer who would go on to write operas (The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, etc.) and a best selling soundtrack album (the score to Jane Campion's Oscar winning film The Piano). 

Produced by Brian Eno, as the sixth release on his temporary Obscure label, Nyman's album features two tracks, one per side. Both are built around the concept of decay. The b-side is a fairly slight work called "Bell Set No.1". The A-side is a beautiful piece titled "1-100". The simple premise is that there are a hundred chords and the performers cannot play the next until he can no longer hear the previous. I was happy to think about the work, without hearing it, for years. 

Almost thirty years after its first release the recording was issued on compact disk, to coincide with the composer's 60th birthday, in 2004. As a bonus track, the original full-speed recording of "1-100" is included. 

"It was called Decay Music, which was produced by Brian Eno. Brian was brilliant. He persuaded Polydor that he should produce – or curate, as we would call it now – a label of what was still called “experimental music.” I think there are ten releases from 1975 to about 1978.

At that time, I’d written precisely two pieces of music. I played him one piece called “Bell Set No. 1,” which is a kind of fake Steve Reich percussion equivalent for four organs. We recorded that and Brian said, “I’d put this as the B-side of someone else’s album.” I said, “I want the whole album to myself.” He said, “What else do you have?” I said, “I have this piece called ‘1 – 100,’” which was the soundtrack to my very first [Peter] Greenaway film.

It was a solo piano piece where you sustain a hundred chords running from the top of the piano to the bottom of the piano. When the sound has died away, you play the next chord. It’s an old Morton Feldman idea. So, we recorded it. Lasted about 18 minutes and Brian said, “Is that it?” I said, “Yes,” and he said, “Well, that’s not very interesting,” and I said, “Well, I have this idea,” which I came up with on the spur of the moment. I said, “Let’s play four versions of the piece simultaneously,” so they all existed on their kind of own time and space and there’s a lot of overlapping of chords.

After I was done, something really fascinating happened. Brian sent me a dub or copy of the recording to check over. I put this 7-inch reel on it and started listening to it. I really enjoyed the mix of the piece, and listened for 15, 20, 25 minutes and I thought, “What’s happening? This is an 18-minute piece and I’m still listening to it at 30 minutes.”

I realized that I was listening to it at half-speed, and it sounded fantastic. I immediately rang Brian and said, “Look, I have accidentally created a sound world that we didn’t intend and we have to release this piece. Play it at half-speed!”"

- Michael Nyman