Liner Notes

Liner notes:

February 2000. I find an old cassette marked, in faded biro, ‘Silver Pyramid.’ I blow off the dust and gingerly place it into the time machine. It takes me back to May 1969. In the middle of an long day of music - one of a four day Music Now event at the Round House in London - which started at 3pm and was scheduled to go on to 10pm. We had stamina in those days! Amidst works by John Cage, LaMonte Young, Terry Jennings, George Brecht, Christopher Hobbs, Christian Wolff, Howard Skempton and Cornelius Cardew stood my totem Silver Pyramid, a wooden framed structure covered with shimmering, reflecting material that shot light out at every angle - more a visual piece than a composition for music making. But no matter. There were artists in the place who would turn anything into music if you only had the courage to ask them. And courage wasn’t really needed. They would do it at the drop of a hat.

I listen to the silvery threads of sound catching a ear glimpse of this or that person. Keith is prowling and growling the whole time - worrying at the music (Rowe aficionados will certainly want to add this to their collections), - there are metallic scrapings, cello sounds (that I think must have come from Cornelius) and wistful whistling on penny flutes. And then the long sinuous sounds finish. The tape runs out and breaks as the strains of time finally give out. I am left wondering what it was all about. I must hear it again. It takes a special trip a studio with the reel to reel tapes to get put it down in DAT form so that I can hear those strange echoes again. I listen and decide that maybe others should hear it too.

SILVER PYRAMID - a mystery

The pyramid has as many sides as you can see and more. Look further, not with your eyes and you will know there are one, two, three, four or more.

For the myopic there may be only one that he sees but if he is lucky. He may see another myope or ghostly dancing figures. And then begin a dialogue.

A furtive looking man stands close to a corner and tries to pull his eyes apart. He must rest content with memory, so that he hears two perhaps (or more). What he sees is one together and he remembers the other.

Within sound and in sight of seven another sees the diamond that the furtive man missed but not the duets that he glimpsed. They to him are but strange solos.

There are two others, maybe more: one sees the point, the line, the triangles and the square all at once. His is a high (but not the highest) position to maintain. He sees, hears and understands but cannot easily act. It is as if his knowing renders him useless. It is how he has come to know that disables him. The other is many and blind. And within darkness conceives that which can only be imagined.

Eddie Prévost November 1967 The text that is reproduced above is what may loosely be called the score. It may be a curiosity. But such approaches were far from uncommon then. It is very much a part of its time. Whatever the director of the piece - Keith Rowe - and the band of musicians (as I recall about eight or nine people) who undertook to perform this piece made of it all I can’t say. It was just part of the playful generosity of people wanting to work together that gave it any shape at all. They took my impenetrable text and the beautiful totem that was Silver Pyramid and made something quite wonderful. At this point in time it is impossible for me to tell for sure who took part in this performance. Certainly I can hear Keith Rowe (of course), Cornelius Cardew, Lou Gare and myself. Thereafter I have difficulty knowing who took part. I even thought I remembered people playing who later tell me that they were in the audience. David Jackman is one such. But as part of the programme notes for the Music Now series Victor Schonfield produced a list of the participants. Not all on the list played in the piece but by reproducing the list here I hope that I have not inadvertently omitted anyone who performed in Silver Pyramid.

Eddie Prévost - December 2000

Music Now Ensemble May 1969

Hilary Andus, Polly Barlow, Barbara Brunsdon, Katy Munn, Mary Monson, Michael Parsons, Howard Skempton, Christopher Hobbs, Michael Chant, Maggie Nichols, Tim Souster, Interaction, David Ahern, Lou Gare, Paul Hedley, Letha, John Tilbury, Eddie Prévost, Philip Dadson, Tim Mitchell, Margery, Ann Hasted, Ulli McCarthy, Cornelius Cardew, David Sladen, Chris Dorsett, Wendy Hoile, Greg Bright, Diana Miller, Douglas Griffiths, Ruth Anderson, Bob Guy, Errol Girdlestone, Derek A G Shiel, Angela Bigley, Gavin Bryars, Linda Dyos, Jill and Tom Phillips, Keith and Krystyna Rowe, Janet and Keith Robertson, Diana Gravill, Bevan Jones, Bernard and Atheline Kelly, John R. Nash, Carol Finer, Alex Hill, Peter Jordan, Allan Cutts, Hugh Davies, Clem Greenford and (as Victor wrote) others whose names slipped through the net.

note: soon after these and other notable events which drew many creative people together the Scratch Orchestra was formed.

Track listing

1. Silver Pyramid (73.47): the music is a continuous single performance but divided into five tracks 'to assist retrieval'

Recorded at The Roundhouse, London as part of a Music Now Festival on 4 May 1969. Front cover (reproduced above) by Keith Rowe.