Howard While Skempton was born on 31 October 1947 and is an English composer, pianist, and accordionist.
12 Facts About Howard Skempton
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Howard Skempton was born in Chester and studied at Birkenhead School and Ealing Technical College.
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Howard Skempton started composing before 1967, but that year he moved to London and began taking private lessons in composition from Cornelius Cardew.
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In 1968 Howard Skempton joined Cardew's experimental music class at Morley College, where in spring 1969 Cardew, Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons organised the Scratch Orchestra.
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Since 1971 Howard Skempton has been working as a music editor, performer, and teacher.
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Howard Skempton was the winner in the Chamber Scale Composition category at the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards in 2005 for his string quartet Tendrils.
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Howard Skempton's style is characterised by a concentration on quality of sound and economy of means, absence of development in the conventional sense, and concentration on sonority.
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Formative influences on Howard Skempton's music included the works of Erik Satie, John Cage and Morton Feldman.
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For example, A Humming Song, an early piano piece composed before Howard Skempton started lessons with Cardew, is a miniature with static, gentle sound.
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The early 1970s saw a slow shift from static, abstract pieces to pieces with more clearly defined rhythmic and harmonic structures, although the methods and forms Howard Skempton used remained unorthodox.
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Finally, in the 1970s Howard Skempton started playing accordion and composing for this instrument.
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In 1980 Howard Skempton composed Chorales, his first major work for orchestra.