Summary

This week we’ve looked at the figure of Roberto Gerhard, an example of a composer of electronic music in England during the 1950s and 1960s whose work is largely unrecognised. We’ve looked at his personal history, his musical background, and how this was shaped his approach to electronic music. We also looked at how his approach differed to that of other composers of the time, and how studying his experience has provided us with a unique perspective on the dominant cultural institutions of the period.

In fact, it is this later point that will become more important to us going forward. Next week we put the dates and figures of electronic music history to one side and look more closely at how we’ve acquired the information we’ve used to prepare this chapter. The answer is through deeper investigations into the documents collected and left behind by Roberto Gerhard and collected in his archive.

As we will see next week, archives can be more than just a collection of documents. By thinking critically about their organisation and by developing structures for scholars to navigate them, we can start to piece together unique perspectives on their subjects. So next week, we talk more about the process of digital archiving, and how we went about creating the Roberto Gerhard Digital Archive.