Eric Craven Music

In the March 2013 edition of The Wire, Philip Clark includes Eric Craven in an article titled “Composers Anonymous”. At that time, he might just as well have added “invisible” to that title. Eric had left very little musical footprint and in his introvert modesty still offers little history, other than he taught music and mathematics in secondary schools in his home town of Manchester. He has composed music since his teenage years but, until recently, rarely sought to introduce his music to a wider audience either through performance or publication. His preference has always been to work in isolation without reference to or connection with any other musicians. In the September 2015 issue of Gramophone, Philip Clark gave more than equal consideration to Craven in an article which discusses new ways and innovations by Wolff, Feldman and Finnissy.

In 2011, the late and deeply missed Anthony Goldstone, who had kept in touch with Eric since their college days, introduced him to Stephen Sutton at Divine Art Records and after some encouragement and the addition of magic by Mary Dullea, the first album of Craven’s music, SET for piano, was released on Métier, followed in 2014 by a recital of three piano sonatas – to substantial critical praise – and another
brilliant and inspired cycle, Entangled States.

For many years, Eric has exclusively focused his attention upon the development of the compositional and performance techniques associated with his Non-Prescriptive style of music which, in essence, seeks to realign the relationship between composer and performer. This new collection of Pieces, like SET and Entangled States, reflects Eric Craven’s fascination for the wonders of modern quantum physics and its related theories about the underlying and very weird nature of
existence – in which he sees a parallel to the relationship between composer and performer. Introvert he may be but his music is the opposite, clear and understandable, bold and extrovert.