The Manchester
Neo-Primitivists

The Movement

The Neo-Primitivist style of music composition was defined concretely by Koraz Telamon in his composition Dissertation (1954), but his choral piece Dualität (1953) is considered the first piece to follow the style.

Characterised by slow languid melodies stripped of consonant harmony and focus on theatricality, Telamon viewed the style as a departure from serialism, which had grown to dominate the European avant-garde. He says, ''Shifting away from serialism and impressionism, we bring a neo-primitive style alien to all music heretofore thought of''.

In 1953, following the first performance of Dualität in Manchester, a group of composers coalesced around Telamon, the central core of the movement. This mainly included Lauren Havelock-Etxarte, Johannes Grossberger, Enzo Fragola, and Alfred Bee, who all studied and worked at Manchester Polytechnical University until 1977. Whilst many other 'collaborators' left the movement after a brief period, these 5 composers stayed to become the 5 main composers of the Manchester Neo-Primitivist school.

By 1985, the obscure movement had largely been abandoned, with Telamon moving primarily towards the formula method of composition in writing his cycle of opera-theatre The Months.