Michael Nyman is a British composer, pianist, librettist and musicologist from Stratford, United Kingdom, born in 1944. He works in classical music and is closely associated with minimalism and film soundtracks.

Career

Nyman studies Baroque music with Thurston Dart at King’s College London. He is widely known for his long collaboration with filmmaker Peter Greenaway, for whom he writes a series of scores that draw on early music. These include music based on Henry Purcell for The Draughtsman’s Contract and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber for A Zed and Two Noughts, Mozart for Drowning by Numbers, and John Dowland for Prospero’s Books.

His profile rises further after he composes the score for Jane Campion’s The Piano. The soundtrack becomes a classical best-seller, and he receives nominations for a British Academy Award and a Golden Globe, but not an Academy Award. He also scores many other films, mostly European art films, and has a small number of Hollywood credits, including Gattaca, Ravenous with Damon Albarn, and The End of the Affair.

Concert works and stage music

Among Nyman’s better-known non-film works are Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs for soprano, alto, tenor and instrumental ensemble, based on his score for La Princesse de Milan; Ariel Songs for soprano and band; MGV (Musique à Grande Vitesse) for band; concertos for piano, harpsichord, trombone and saxophone; the opera The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, based on an Oliver Sacks case study; and several string quartets. He also writes music for children’s television, including Katie and Orbie and Titch.

Ensemble and recordings

Many of his works are written for the Michael Nyman Band, which he forms for a 1976 production of Carlo Goldoni’s Il Campiello. The group initially combines older instruments such as rebecs and shawms with more modern ones, including saxophone, to create a loud sound without amplification. It later changes to an amplified line-up of string quartet, three saxophones, bass trombone, bass guitar and piano, with further alterations and additions for some pieces.

Nyman also records pop music with the Flying Lizards and has a label, Michael Nyman Ltd.

Writing and influence

In 1974, he publishes Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, a book on experimental music and the influence of John Cage on classical composers. He is also generally credited with being the first to apply the term “minimalism” to music, in a 1968 article in The Spectator about Cornelius Cardew.

Other work

In the 1970s, Nyman is a member of the Portsmouth Sinfonia, the self-described “World’s Worst Orchestra”, appearing on recordings and in concerts.