Henry Cow - Music

Music

Henry Cow's music included elaborately scored pieces (often with complex time signatures), tape manipulations, "flat-out free improvisation" and songs. It incorporated elements of jazz, rock, contemporary classical music and the avant-garde. Dagmar Krause's vocals added another dimension to their sound, giving it a dramatic, almost Brechtian flair. Music journalists at the time often underestimated the formal compositional element of their music, while others simply dismissed it as being "inaccessible".

Their music was often experimental, making classification all but impossible. However, the following styles (amongst others) are often associated with Henry Cow:

• progressive rock
• art rock
• avant-rock
• experimental rock
• chamber rock
• free improvisation
• Rock in Opposition (strictly not a style of music but rather a collection of like-minded musicians)

John Kelman wrote at All About Jazz that "Henry Cow represented a new kind of classical chamber music; one where spontaneity was a partial component, and the instrumentation used created textures that defied those looking for tradition and convention." Edward Macan in his 1997 book Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture described Henry Cow's music as "highly eclectic" and said that their pieces often included "furious atonal instrumental passages with no discernable melodic contour or key center, impossibly complex shifting meters alternating with freely ametric sections with no definable beat or regular recurring rhythms, and jagged, sprechstimme-like vocal lines that blur the line between song and speech."

Henry Cow's music was challenging, not only to the listener, but also to the band themselves. They often composed pieces to challenge their own capabilities. Some of their music was scored beyond the conventional ranges of their music instruments necessitating that they "reinvent their instruments", learn how to play them in completely new ways. And yet their music may not have been as good as it could have been. Henry Cow conducted their affairs as a committee, having regular, minuted meetings with no decisions being made unless approved by the group. This included their music. Band members brought their ideas to the table and sometimes they ended up being changed as a result of the collective process. It is impossible to say if these changes were for the better or if they dampened the composer's personal visions.

Henry Cow was very much a live band, yet of the original six albums they made, only one, Henry Cow Concerts gave a glimpse of their live performances. In January 2009 Recommended Records released The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set, a nine-CD plus one-DVD collection of over 10 hours of previously unreleased and mostly live recordings made between 1972 and 1978, over four hours of which was improvised. This offered, "for the first time," according to All About Jazz, "a comprehensive account of Henry Cow's breadth and depth."