Michael Edward Parsons (born 12 December 1938) is a British composer. Since the 1960s, when he met Cornelius Cardew and helped found the Scratch Orchestra, Parsons has been strongly associated with the English school of experimental music. He was born in

Bolton Bolton (, locally ) is a large town in Greater Manchester in North West England, formerly a part of Lancashire. A former mill town, Bolton has been a production centre for textiles since Flemish weavers settled in the area in the 14th ce ...

and studied at

St John's College, Oxford St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. Founded as a men's college in 1555, it has been coeducational since 1979.Communication from Michael Riordan, college archivist Its founder, Sir Thomas White, intended to pr ...

before taking up composition lessons under Peter Racine Fricker at the

Royal College of Music The Royal College of Music is a music school, conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the Undergraduate education, undergraduate to the Doctorate, doctoral level in a ...

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

in 1961. In the 1960s he met Cornelius Cardew; Parsons attended Cardew's experimental music classes at Morley College since 1968. In 1969 Cardew, Parsons and fellow composer

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. Skempt ...

founded the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental free ensemble devoted to performing contemporary music. The Orchestra broke up in early 1970s, partly as a result of the politization led by Cardew. Parsons was among the Orchestra members who refused to be associated with the Maoist politics Cardew was propagating, and left. In 1970 Parsons started working as visiting lecturer in the Fine Art department of the Portsmouth Polytechnic and in the

Slade School of Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = � ...

. In 1974 he and Skempton formed a duo to perform their own works. In 1996–97 Parsons was a bi-fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge. During this time he organised concerts at Kettle's Yard,

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge beca ...

. Since the early 1960s Parsons has also been active as a writer on music; his writings include a number of important articles on contemporary English composers. Parsons' music is influenced by

Anton Webern Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), better known as Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor whose music was among the most radical of its milieu in its sheer concision, even aphorism, and ste ...

, composers of the so-called New York school ( John Cage, Morton Feldman and Christian Wolff), various English composers he met through Cardew and the Scratch Orchestra, and, since the Portsmouth years, " Systems" artists such as

Malcolm Hughes Malcolm Hughes (22 July 1920 – 19 September 1997) was a British constructive artist. Biography Hughes was born in Manchester and during the Second World War, he was a radio operator in the Royal Navy. After the war he became influenced by Bri ...

and Jeffrey Steele.

Publications

* Parsons, Michael (1976): "Systems in Art and Music", ''The Musical Times'', Vol. 117, No. 1604 (Oct. 1976), pp. 815–1

accessed 16 February 2010
Jems: Journal of Experimental Music Studies
includes articles on Howard Skempton by Michael Parsons, as well as other materials on English experimental composers.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Parsons, Michael 1938 births Living people English classical composers English experimental musicians 20th-century classical composers People from Bolton Academics of the Slade School of Fine Art English male classical composers 20th-century English composers 21st-century English composers 20th-century British male musicians 21st-century British male musicians