Tristram Cary

Tristram Ogilvie Cary was born in Oxford on 14 May 1925 and eventually adopted Australian nationality. His significance lies in combining a composing career with the development of electronic music in both the United Kingdom and Australia across the second half of the twentieth century.

His studies were interrupted by the Second World War, during which he served in the navy as a radar and electronics specialist. While at the Trinity College of Music he began experimenting with the electronic manipulation of sound, and over the following two decades he built up his own studio, combining commercial equipment with apparatus he constructed himself. In the 1950s he became known chiefly for his scores for film, theatre, radio and television, in which he combined electronics with acoustic instruments. In 1967 he founded the electronic music studio at the Royal College of Music and, the following year, took part in the first major electronic music concert held in the United Kingdom, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Between 1959 and 1973 he composed fourteen concert works for electronic medium, some of them with live instruments. Among these is the cantata Peccata mundi, which integrates electronics, chorus and orchestra, and whose libretto, written by Cary himself, reflects his concern for the terrestrial environment and for the destructiveness of modern society.

In 1969 he established the company Electronic Music Studios, devoted to the design and marketing of the Voltage Controlled Studio Mark 3 (VCS3), known in the United States as the 'Putney' and regarded as one of the most successful synthesizers ever manufactured. In 1973 he toured Australia giving lectures on electronic music and, a year later, was appointed senior lecturer at the University of Adelaide, where he set up a substantial electronic studio. His later works show the influence of the South Australian landscape, as in Contours & Densities at First Hill (1976). His idiom is eclectic, ranging from free atonality and twelve-tone techniques to a relaxed exploration of melodies with tonal references.

Cary is remembered as one of the composers who brought electronics from the laboratory into the concert hall, the cinema and the commercial synthesizer, bridging the gap between creative practice and instrument manufacture.