Howard Skempton

Howard While Skempton (born 31 October 1947) is an English composer, pianist, and accordionist. Since the late 1960s, when he helped to organise the Scratch Orchestra, he has been associated with the English school of experimental music. Skempton’s work is characterised by stripped-down, essentials-only choice of materials, absence of formal development and a strong emphasis on melody. The musicologist Hermann-Christoph Müller has described Skempton’s music as “the emancipation of the consonance”. Life Skempton was born in Chester and studied at Birkenhead School and Ealing Technical College. He started composing before 1967, but that year he moved to London and began taking private lessons in composition from Cornelius Cardew. In 1968 Skempton joined Cardew’s experimental music class at Morley College, where in spring 1969 Cardew, Skempton and Michael Parsons organised the Scratch Orchestra. This ensemble, which had open membership, was dedicated to performing experimental contemporary music by composers such as La Monte Young, John Cage and Terry Riley, as well as by members of the orchestra itself. One of Skempton’s early works, Drum No. 1 (1969), became one of the “most useful