Born in 1937, he studied at the Royal College of Music under Lennox Berkeley, in Venice with Luigi Nono and at the RAI Electronic Music Studio in Milan. A contemporary composer with the reputation to have Radio 3 devote a whole 105 minute programme of late night broadcasting to his works in 1998, he is also a musician whose collaborations with Tubular Bells rock-composer Mike Oldfield span three decades, and who seems to be comfortable on that edge where progressive rock has ambitions to orchestral seriousness. In conjunction with Kevin Ayers of Soft Machine Bedford combined rock with acoustic music (their band was Whole World).