Henry Cow

“Clive Bell, an early friend of Henry Cow in Cambridge who would develop into a gifted improviser in his own right, recalls the presentation of a new work for piano by Roger Smalley, the composer-in-residence at King’s College, Cambridge, during their time there in the late 1960s. It began with the composer drawing complex mathematical diagrams on a blackboard for several minutes. ‘And then he went over to the piano and played this completely wild piece that might as well have been totally improvised, as far as I was concerned,’ Bell recalls. ‘I just thought it was kind of hilarious, that all these diagrams led to this flailing, Cecil Taylor freak-out.’ Bell’s experience represents an increasingly common one for listeners of his generation, especially those rooted in the recording-intensive traditions of African American music such as jazz and rock ’n’ roll. His ears moved transversally across relatively distinct…