Ernest Berk was one of the most prolific composers of early electronic music in England, creating over 220 pieces across a career spanning three decades. Yet his contribution to electronic music is all but forgotten today.
After fleeing Germany in the 1930s, Berk opened a dance and electronic music studio in Camden, London and began dedicating himself to the composition of electronic music and musique concrète. Many of these works would accompany Berk’s own highly modernist contemporary dance pieces, but some would later also find use in theatre, television, and film productions. His synthesis of musique concrète and contemporary dance made him one of the most visionary practitioners in a wave of pioneering English electronic music composers throughout the 1960s and 1970s that included Delia Derbyshire, Daphne Oram, and Tristram Cary. His music was programmed alongside these names, and others, for the ground-breaking Queen Elizabeth Hall concert of electronic music in 1968.
Despite far-reaching influence within music and dance scenes of the time, Berk never achieved lasting recognition and his legacy as a composer, performer, and pedagogue has now all but slipped from the public consciousness. When he died in Berlin in 1993, he was destitute.
Ernest Berk 