John Tilbury and Terry Riley’s ‘Keyboard Study no. 1’
In recent weeks, I have been actively trying to solve a musical mystery which at various times has cropped up in my thoughts and caused me a good deal of confusion. What is this mystery? It seems that there exists an alternative version of Keyboard Study no. 1 — a classic minimalist piano piece written by Terry Riley in 1965 — which has not been addressed so far.
Since the beginning of 2022, I have become a somewhat regular critic of album releases by the UK-based music label Another Timbre, which I have been following for some time with great interest. The label’s unconventional discography, carefully selected and curated by its own originator Simon Reynell, has proved to be refreshing and managed to form a specific niche within the broader range of new music in the 15 years of the label’s existence. While the bigger chunk of Another Timbre’s production output is dedicated to living composers, there are some occasional discs celebrating the music of those who are not with us anymore, such as John Cage and Morton Feldman amongst others.
Back in May 2022, I asked Simon if he could send me over some new CDs to be reviewed. Little did I know how much joy and excitement one particular album of such kind would give me. Without any expectations, I downloaded Terry Riley: Keyboard Studies and began listening. The next seventy minutes of my life took me to a blissful and spiritual nirvana. John Tilbury’s playing was superb and dreamy. No wonder the album was often played in my earphones during the walks in the following summer months.
The CD features three pieces written by Riley in the 1960s: Keyboard Study no. 1, Keyboard Study no. 2 and Dorian Reeds — all of which are regrettably overshadowed by the more popular and extensive ensemble composition In C written in 1964. These pieces are, in many ways, great examples of early minimalist repertoire. Yet, as I began researching and listening to some other renditions of Keyboard Study no. 1, excited and eager to share my purifying and transcendental experience with the music, I started to notice that something was off and became progressively perplexed: none of the other recordings were in any meaningful way resembling what Tilbury had managed to produce. Indeed, what he had done was to perform a completely different and idiosyncratic version of the piece.
After I had submitted my review, I simply forgot about this inconsistency and moved on with my life. The new burst of interest was sparked by a performance of Keyboard Study no. 1 by Kerry Yong, a member of Apartment House, on September 7 2022 at Cafe OTO, which I attended. Yong, just like many others, performed the canonical version, which reminded me about my findings and only further cemented my suspicion that Tilbury’s version was rather unique. And so I began investigating.
American composer Terry Riley came up with a series of Keyboard Studies shortly after the success of In C as an attempt to foster his own way of piano improvisation, informed by his skills in blues, jazz and ragtime piano performance. Some confusion exists surrounding the dating of such improvisational exercises, though the composer ascribes them to 1965. Interestingly, while there are at least six such studies, the first two are the only ones Riley made the effort to notate. These were intended to be more like, as their name suggests, exercises rather than proper composition, yet they are, quoting Riley himself, ‘a real hard-core minimalist piece’ (Potter 2000, p. 122).
While both compositions demand creative input from the performer by virtue of their open-ended nature, it still cannot justify some of the performative strategies Tilbury chose to employ with Keyboard study no. 1. Listen to Tilbury’s version and compare it to Gregor Schwellenbach’s rendition from 2016, published on the German label FILM, or to Steffen Schleiermacher’s recording made in 2002 on the German MDG label. There are also numerous live recordings of Keyboard Study no. 1 on YouTube which all conform to the original score — the one Tilbury does not follow.
The most striking difference in Tilbury’s performance is the musical material itself, which features patterns absent from the original score. Without going too much into compositional details, it sounds like a completely disparate piece of music. At this point of my narration, it is worth noting that the tracks released in May 2022 on Another Timbre are actually archival and were produced in Hamburg sometime between 1975 and 1995, which seems like a large span of time. Sadly, more precise details were forgotten. It is also known that Tilbury recorded keyboard studies for BBC Radio in 1971 and performed them in his concerts. While I knew that Tilbury and Riley were friends from the 1960s, I thought this nuance might lead me onto something more substantial and elucidating.
First, I decided to consult on this matter with my MA supervisor Keith Potter, who has written an excellent book on the subject (‘Four Musical Minimalists’). Sadly, Keith knew nothing about the peculiarities of this particular recording, though his book mentions that ‘the only currently extant copies of it [Keyboard Study no. 1] are of what its composer calls a “re-creation” of the piece, with some of the original patterns and some new ones added, made in about 1994 for the British pianist John Tilbury’ (Potter 2000, p. 123). This seemed strange as the only copy of the score I could get access to was indeed what I have been referring to as the ‘original’ score. So, perhaps, what Tilbury does in this archival recording is actually playing the ‘old’ version of the piece.
Next, I contacted Simon Reynell and asked if he, as the publisher of this CD, would have more information. Simon kindly sent me the score and confirmed that both Riley and Tilbury were friends. He told me that he was aware of Tilbury’s loose interpretations when it comes to semi-improvised scores and that Riley was fine with that. My last course of action was to reach out to John Tilbury himself and see if he could explain the discrepancies in the recordings. I was very surprised and pleased to find his email response pop up in my inbox. Here is what he had to say about it:
“Regarding the music, there is not much I can say. I got the ‘score’ directly from Terry a long time ago, probably in the early seventies. I think his approach to his own music was flexible. He didn’t honour/cherish his ‘score’ in the way that most composers do. It was the basis, a point of departure for the music, but Terry didn’t believe in telling performers what to do in the traditional sense. And, of course, the situation at the time had become quite ridiculous. As a performer one was simply carrying out orders, cf Stockhausen’s early piano music.
The short answer to your questions is that I can’t remember, although I don’t think that matters. What matters is what you hear in the recording, and you can draw your own conclusions. I seem to have taken more liberty, in particular, in Keyboard Studies no. 1, although some important sequences survive, although I confess I have only heard Terry’s own performances. I wrote to him for his approval, or disapproval, but he didn’t reply. Well, why should he, he is nearly 90, and I like to think he trusts me. It was a tough session in Hamburg but it was worth every minute of it. By the way, he wasn’t at the recording session.”
And so, according to Tilbury, it was more or less an intuitive decision on his part — mystery solved. His performative strategy, adding melodic motives which are not present in the score, managed to produce a highly personal and mesmerising interpretation. It is this performance and imaginative treatment of Riley’s material I have fallen in love with and not the ‘original’ version. Could it be the ‘old’ version or just a one-off performance? It only leaves me to conduct further research and figure out what exactly goes on in the music. In the next blog post, I would like to address the musical material Tilbury decided to employ and see how it fits with the original score.
