Jonathan Harvey

Light, texture, and magical transformations of the human voice and instrumental sounds characterize the music of Jonathan Harvey. He was a pioneer of electronic music and a master of tone color, mixing electronics, voices, and conventional instruments. Harvey was born in Sutton Coldfield, UK, in 1939 and studied at St. John’s College, Cambridge. From 1980, he worked at the IRCAM studio in Paris. There he created Mortuos plango, vivos voco (1980), in which the sound of a boy’s voice is gradually transformed into a tolling bell. Harvey also drew on computer analysis of instrumental sounds, as in One Evening (1994), in which electronically manipulated sounds blend seamlessly with the live orchestra. An interest in Indian religions informed much of his music, and imbued many scores, from Bhakti (1982) on, with a ritual character. Harvey’s exploration of the voice led to many innovative and atmospheric choral works. He also used the human voice as the basis for Speakings (2008), a work for orchestra and electronics based on analysis of speech patterns at IRCAM. Harvey was professor of music at Sussex University in Brighton. He died in nearby Lewes in 2012.