dunn, david_a history of electronic music pioneers

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D A V I D D U N N

“When intellectual formulations are treated simply

by relegating them to the past and permitting the

s imp le pas sa ge of time to s ubs titute for dev elopm ent,

the s us picion is jus tified that s uch form ulations h ave

not really b een m as tered, but rather they are beingsuppressed .”

—Th eodor W. Adorn o

“It is th e h istorical nece s s ity, if there is a historical

neces sity in history , that a new de cade of electronic

television s hould follow to the pas t de cade of elec-

tronic m us ic.”

—Nam J u ne Paik (1965 )

I N T R O D U C T I O N :

Historical facts reinforce th e obvious realization

tha t the major cu l tura l impetus which spawned

video image experimentation was the American

Sixties. As a respons e to th at cu ltural c lima te, it was

more a perceptua l movemen t tha n a n ar t ist ic one in

the s ense th at i ts pra ctit ioners desired an electronic

equivalen t to th e sens ory an d ph ysiological tremen -

du ms which came to l ife du ring the Vietna m War.

Principal among these was the psychedelic experi-ence with i ts radical experiential assault on the

na tu re of perception an d visu al phenom ena. Armed

with a new visual ontology, whatever art image-

ma king tradit ion informed th em it was less a cine-

ma tic one tha n a n overt cou nter-cultu ral reaction to

television as a ma instream insti tut ion an d pu rveyor

of images that were deemed politically false. The

violence of technology that television personified,

both metap horically and literal ly throu gh th e war

images i t disseminated, represented a source for

renewal in the electronic reconstruction of archaic

perception.

It is s pecifically a concern for th e expan sion of

human perception through a technological strate-

gem th at l inks those tu mu ltu ous years of aesth eticand technical experimentation with the 20th cen-

tury history of modernist exploration of electronic

poten tials, pr imar ily exemplified by th e linea ge of

art ist ic research init ia ted b y electronic soun d a nd

music experimentation beginning as far back as

1906 with the invention of the Telha rmon ium. This

essa y traces some of tha t early history an d its

implications for our curr ent historical predicam ent.

The other ess ential argum ent pu t forth here is tha t

a more recent period of video experimentation,beginning in the 1960's, is only one of the later

chap ters in a history of fai led u topian ism th at

dominates the a rt ist ic exploration an d u se of tech-

nology thr oughout th e 20th centu ry.

The following pa ges pres ent an hist orical context

for the specific focus of this exhibition on early

pioneers of electronic art. Prior to the 1960’s, the

focus is, of necessity, predominantly upon elec-

tronic soun d tool ma king and electroacous tic aes-

thetics as an tecedan t to the more relevan t discus-

sion of the emergence of electronic image genera-t ion/ processing tools and a esth etics. Our intention

is to fram e this ima ge-mak ing tradit ion within th e

realization that many of its concerns were first

art iculated within a n a u dio technology domain a nd

tha t th ey repeat , within t he h igher frequency spec-

tru m of visu al informa tion, s imilar iss ues encoun -

tered within th e electronic mu sic/ sou nd ar t t radi-

t ions. In fact , i t can be argued that many of the

innovators within this period of electronic image-

making evolved directly from participation in the

A HISTORY OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC PIONEERS

D a v i d D u n n

Photo : Sa lva to re Ma rtirano ’ s SAL–MAR CO NSTRUCTION, 1969–72, set up fo r co nc ert a t Sta teUniversity of New York (SUNY), Sto nyb roo k, Lon g Islan d . Courtesy of Sa lva to re Ma rtirano



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D A V I D D U N N

The s pirit of inven tion wh ich imm ediately preceeded th e tur n

of th is century was synchronous wi th a cu l tura l en thusiasm

abou t th e new technologies th at was u np recedented. Individuals

such as Bell , Edison, and Tesla became culture heroes who

u sh ered in a n ideology of ind u stria l progress foun ded u pon th e

power of harnessed electricity. Amongst this assemblage of inventor indu str ialists was DR. THADDEUS CAHILL, inventor of

the electric typewriter, designer and builder of the first musical

syn th esizer an d, by defau lt, originator of indu st rial mu zak. While

a few attempt s to bu ild electronic mu sical instru men ts were mad e

in th e la te 19th centu ry by Elisha Gray, Erns t Lorenz, an d Will iam

Duddell, they were fairly tentative or simply the curious bypro-

du cts of other research into electrical phen omena . One exception

was the mu sical ins tru men t called th e CHORALCELO bu il t in the

United St ates by Melvin L. Severy and George B. Sin clair between

188 8 an d 190 8. Ca h ill’s invention, th e TELHARMONIUM, how-

ever, remains th e most am bitious a t tempt to constru ct a viableelectronic musical instrument ever conceived.

Working a gainst incredible techn ical difficulties, Ca hill su c-

ceeded in 1900 to construct the first prototype of the TELHAR-

MONIUM an d b y 190 6, a fairly com plete rea lization of his vision .

This electro-mechanical device consisted of 145 rheotome/

altern ators capa ble of produ cin g five octaves of var iable har mon ic

content in imitation of orchestral tone colors. Its prinicipal of

operat ion con sisted of wha t we now refer to as a dditive synth esis

an d was controlled from two touch-sen sit ive keyboards capable

of t imbral , amplitude and other art iculatory selections. SinceCah ill’s ma chine was inven ted b efore electron ic amp lification was

available he had to build al ternators that produced more than

10,000 wat ts . As a resu l t the ins t rument was qui te immense ,

weighing approximately 200 tons. When it was shipped from

Holyoke, Massachusetts to New York City, over thirty railroad

flatcars were enlisted in th e effort.

While Cahill’s initial intention was simply to realize a truly

sophist icated electronic instrument that could perform tradi-

tional repetoire, he quickly pursued its industrial application in

a p lan to provide direct mu sic to homes a nd offices as the s trategy

to fu n d its cons tru ction. He foun ded th e New York Electric Mus icCompan y with this intent an d began to su pply realt ime perform-

ances of popular c lassics to subscribers over te lephone l ines.

Ult imately the bu siness fai led du e to ins u rmou nta ble techn ical

an d legal difficulties, ceas ing operations in 191 1.

The Telharm onium an d i ts inventor represent s one of the m ost

sp ectacu lar examp les of one side of a recu rren t dialectic which we

will see demonstrated repeatedly throughout the 20th century

h istory of th e ar tistic u se of electronic tech nology. Cah ill person i-

fies the industrial ideology of invention which seeks to imitate

more efficiently the status quo. Such an ideology desires to



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E I G E N W E L T D E R A P P A R A T E W E L T

summarize existent knowledge through a new technology and

th ereby provide a m ar keta ble repres enta tion of cur ren t reality. In

contr as t to th is view, th e moder nist ideology evolved to a ss ert a n

an ti-representa tionist u se of techn ology which sou ght to expan d

human perception through the acquisi t ion of new technical

mean s. It desired to seek the u nk nown as new phen omenologicalan d experiential u nders tan dings which sh attered models of the

so-called “real”.

The modern ist agend a is br illian tly su m ma rized by the follow-

ing quote by Hu go Ball:

“It is true that for us art is not an end in itself, we hav e lost too m any

of our illus ions for that. Art is for us an occas ion for social criticis m ,

and for real und erstand ing of the a ge w e live in...Dad a w as not a

school of artists, but an alarm signal against declining values,

routine an d sp eculations, a des perate app eal, on b eha lf of all form s

of art, for a creative bas is on w hich to build a new and universalcons ciousn es s of art.”

Many comp osers at the beginn ing of this centu ry dreamed of

new electronic technologies that could expand the palette of

soun d and tu nings of which mu sic and m us ica l ins t ru ments th en

consisted. Their interest was not to use the emerging electronic

potential to imitate exista nt forms, b u t ra ther to go beyond wh at

was already known. In the same year that Cahil l f inalized the

Telharmonium and moved it to New York City, the composer

FERRUCCIO BUSONI wrote h is Entw urf einer neuen Äs thetik der Tonkunst (Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music) wherein he

proposed th e necessi ty for an expans ion of the chroma tic scale

and new (possibly electrical) instruments to realize it. Many

composers emb raced th is idea an d began to conceptua lize what

such a music should consist of. In the following year, the

Au str alian compos er PERCY GRAINGER was already con vin ced

tha t his concept of FREE MUSIC could only be realized th rou gh

use of electro-mechanical devices. By 1908 the Futurist Mani-

festo was pu blish ed an d th e modernist ideology began its a rt ists’

revolt a gains t exista nt social an d cu ltural valu es. In 19 13 Lu igi

Russolo wrote The A rt of Nois e , declaring that the “evolution of music is paralled by the multiplication of the machine”. By the

end of th at year, RUSSOLO AND UGO PIATTI ha d con st ru cted a n

orchestra of e lectro-mechanical noise instruments ( intonaru-

mori) capable of realizing their vision of a sound art which

shattered the musical sta tus quo. Russolo desired to create a

sound based art form out of the noise of modern life. His noise

intoning devices presented their array of “howlers, boomers,

crack lers , scraper s, exploders, bu zzers, gurglers, and wh istles” to

bewildered au diences in Italy, LONDON, an d fin ally Paris in 192 1,

where he gained the at tention of Varèse and Stravinsky. Soon



25

D A V I D D U N N

after this concert the instruments were apparently only used

commercially for generating sound effects and were abandoned

by Russ olo in 1 930.

Throu ghout th e second d ecade of the 20th centu ry there was

an u np recedented am oun t of experimental mu sic activity much

of which involved discourse about the necessity for new instru-m enta l resou rces cap ab le of realizing the em ergin g theories which

rejected tr adit ional composit ional processes. Composers su ch a s

Ives, Sa tie, Cowell, VARÈSE, a nd Sch oenberg were a dvan cing the

stru ctura l an d ins tru men tal resou rces for mu sic . It was into this

intellectual c limate, and into th e cultura l cha nges brou ght on by

th e Ru ss ian Revolut ion, th at LEON THEREMIN (Lev Sergeyevich

Termen) intr oduced th e Aetherophone (la ter known as the Ther-

emin), a new electronic instrument based on radio-frequency

oscillation s cont rolled by han ds m oving in s pa ce over two ant en-

nae. The extraordinary flexibility of the instrument not only

allowed for th e perform an ce of tra ditiona l repetoire bu t also a widera nge of n ew effects. The th eatr icality of its playing techn ique an d

the u niqueness of it s s ound made th e Theremin the m ost rad ica l

mu sical instru men t innovation of the early 20th centu ry.

The success of the Theremin brought i ts inventor a modest

celebrity statu s. In the following years he intr oduced th e instru -

ment to Vladimir Lenin, invented one of the earliest television

devices, a n d m oved to New York City. Th ere h e gave con certs with

Leopold Stokowski, entertained Albert Einstein and married a

black dancer named Lavinia Williams. In 1932 he collaborated

with t h e electron ic im age p ioneer MARY ELLEN BUTE to disp layma them atical formu las on a CRT synchron ized to m u sic . He also

cont inued to invent n ew inst ru ments su ch as the Rhythmicon, a

complex cross-rhythm instrument produced in collaboration

with HENRY COWELL. Upon his return to the Soviet Union in

1938, Theremin was placed under house arrest and directed to

work for the s tate on commu nications an d s u rveil lan ce techn olo-

gies until his retirement in the late 1960’s.

In ma ny ways, Leon Theremin r epresents an arch etypal ex-

am ple of th e artist/ engineer whose brilliant initial career is

coopted by industry or government. In his case the irony is

part icularly poignan t in th at he invented his instru men ts in thefu ll flowering of th e Bolsh evik enth u sias m for progress ive cultu re

u n der Lenin a n d s u bs equen tly fell prey to Sta lin’s ideology of fear

an d repress ion. Therem in was prevented u nti l 1991 (at 95 years

of age) from s teppin g foot ou tside th e USSR becaus e he poss ess ed

class ified informa tion a bou t rad ar a nd s u rveillan ce tech nologies

tha t h ad been obsolete for years . This s u ppress ion of inn ovation

thr ough ins t itu t iona l amb ivalence, cens orship or co-optation is

also one of the r ecurren t pa tterns of the a rt ist ic u se of techn ology

thr oughout th e 20th centu ry. Wha t often begins with th e desire

to expan d h u ma n p erception ends with commoditization or direct



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repression.

By the end of th e 192 0’s a large ass ortm ent of new electronic

musical instruments had been developed. In Germany JÖRG

MAGER ha d been experiment ing with th e design of n ew electronic

instru men ts. The most s u ccess fu l was the SPHÄROPHON, a ra dio

frequency oscil la tor ba sed k eyboard ins tru men t cap able of pro-du cing qu ar ter-tone divisions of th e octave. Mager’s ins tru men ts

used loudspeakers wi th unique dr iver systems and shapes to

achieve a variety of sounds. Maurice Martenot introduced his

Ondes Marten ot in Fra nce where the ins tru men t rapidly gained

acceptance with a wide assortment of established composers.

New works were written for the ins tru men t by Milh au d, Honegger,

Jolivet, VARÈSE and eventually MESSIAEN who wrote Fête de s

Belles Eaux for an ensem ble of six Ond es Martenots in 1937 an d

later as a solo instru men t in h is 3 PETITES LITURGIES of 194 4.

The On des Martenot was ba sed u pon s imilar techn ology as the

Theremin a nd Sph ärophon bu t in t roduced a mu ch more sophis-ticated a n d flexible control str ategy.

Other new inst ru ments in t roduced a roun d th is t ime were the

Dynap h one of Rene Bertra nd , the Hellertion of Bru n o Helberger

and Peter Lertes, and an organlike “synthesis” instrument de-

vised by J . Givelet and E. Cou pleau x which u sed a p u nch ed paper

roll control system for au dio oscillators cons tru cted with over 700

vacuum tubes. One of the longest lived of this generation of

electronic instruments was the TRAUTONIUM of Dr. Friedrich

Trau twein. This keyboard instr u men t was bas ed upon d ist inctly

different techn ology tha n t he p rinciples p revious ly m entioned. Itwas one of the first ins tru men ts to u se a n eon-tube oscilla tor an d

its u niqu e sou n d could be s electively filtered du ring performa n ce.

Its resonance filters could emphasize specific overtone regions.

The instr u men t was developed in conjun ction with the Hochsch u le

fü r Mus ic in Berlin where a research program for composit ional

manipulation of phonograph recordings had been founded two

years earlier in 1928. The composer PAUL HINDEMITH partici-

pated in both of these endeavors, composing a Concertino for

Trautonium and String Orchestra and a sound montage based

u pon ph onograph record m an ipu lations of voice and instru men ts.

Other composers who wrote for the Trau tonium inclu ded RichardStrau ss a nd Werner Egk. The greatest virtu oso of this instru men t

was th e composer OSKAR SALA who performed on it, and m ad e

techn ical improvemen ts , into th e 195 0’s. Also abou t this tim e,

the composer Robert Beyer published a curious paper about

“space” or “room music” entitled Das Problem der Kommender

Musik that gained little attention from his colleagues (Beyer’s

subsequent role in the history of electronic music will be dis-

cus sed later).

The German experiments in phon ograph ma nipu lation cons ti-

tute one of the first attempts at organizing sound electronically



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D A V I D D U N N

tha t was n ot based u pon an ins tru men tal model. While this ini t ia l

at tempt at the st ipulation of sound events through a kind of

scu lptu ral mou ldin g of recorded m aterials was s hort lived, it set

in m otion on e of th e principle app roach es to electron ic compos i-

t ion to become dom ina nt in decades to come: the electronic mu sic

s tu dio . Other a t tempts a t a n on- inst ru menta l approach to soundorgan ization began in 19 30 within both the USSR and Germ an y.

With the invention of optical sound tracks for film a number of

theorists become inspired to experiment with synthetic sound

generated through standard animation fi lm techniques. In the

USSR two centers for this research were established: A.M.

Avzaa m ov, N.Y. Zhelins ky, an d N.V. VOINOV experim en ted a t th e

Scientific Experimental Film Institute in Leningrad while E.A

SCHOLPO and G.M. Rimski-Korsakov performed similar re-

search at th e Leningrad Conservatory. In th e sam e year, Bauh au s

ar t i s t s performed exper iments wi th hand-drawn waveforms

converted into sound through photoelectric cells. Two otherGerman artists, RUDOLPH PFENNINGER and OSCAR FISCH-

INGER worked s epar ately at a bou t th is tim e exploring synt hetic

sou nd genera tion th rough techn iqu es th at were similar to Voinov

an d Avzaan ov.

A dramatic increase in new electronic instruments soon

appeared in subsequent years. All of them seem to have had

fas cina ting if not ou trightly absu rd n am es: the Sonorous Cross;

th e ELECTROCHORD; the On diolin e; th e CLAVIOLINE; th e Ka-

leidoph on; the Electron ium Pi; th e Mu ltimon ica; the Pian ophon ;

the Tuttivox; the Mellertion; the Emicon; the Melodium; theOscillion; the Magnetton; the Photophone; the Orgatron; the

Photon a; an d th e PARTITUROPHON. While mos t of these ins tru -

men ts were inten ded to produce new sonic resources, some were

intended to replicate familiar instrumental sounds of the pipe

organ variety. It is precisely th is des ire to replicate t he fam iliar

which spa wned th e other ma jor tradit ion of e lectronic ins tru men t

design: the large fam ilies of electric organ s a nd pian os th at b egan

to ap pea r in t h e ear ly 19 30 ’s. LAURENS HAMMOND bu ilt h is first

electronic organ in 1 929 u sing the sa me tone-wheel process as

Cah ill’s Telharm onium . Electronic organs bu ilt in th e following

years b y Hamm ond in clu ded th e NOVACHORD and th e Solovox.While Hammond’s organ’s were rejected by pipe organ enthusi-

as ts b ecaus e its a ddit ive synth esis technique s oun ded too “elec-

tron ic,” h e was t h e first to achieve both st ab le inton ation th rou gh

synchronized electromechanical sound generators and mass

produ ction of an electronic mu sical ins tru men t, set t ing a prece-

dent for popular acceptance. Hammond also patented a spring

reverberation technique that is still widely used.

The Warbo Formant Organ (1937) was one of the first truly

polyphonic electronic instruments that could be considered a

predecessor of curren t e lectronic organs . Its designer the Germ an



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engineer HARALD BODE was one of the central figures in the

history of e lectronic mu sic in both Eu rope and the United States.

Not only did he contribu te to instru men t design from th e 1930 ’s

on, he was one of the principle engineers in establishing the

clas sic tape mu sic studios in Eu rope. His contr ibu tions stra ddled

the two ma jor design tradit ions of new sou nd s versu s imitat ion of tradit ional ones without much bias since he was primarily an

engineer interested in providing tools for a wide range of musi-

cian s. Other ins tru men ts which he sub sequen tly bu ilt included

th e Melodium , th e MELOCHORD an d th e Polychord (Bode’s other

contributions will be discussed later in this essay).

By the la te 1930’s there was an increase of experimental

activity in both Europe and the United States. 1938 saw the

inst allation of th e ANS Synt hes izer at th e Moscow Experiment al

Mus ic Stu dio. JOHN CAGE began his long fas cin ation with elec-

tronic sou nd s ources in 1939 with th e presentation of Imaginary

Lands cape No. 1 , a live perform an ce work wh ose score includesa part for disc recordings performed on a variable speed ph ono-

graph. A nu mb er of similar works u ti liz ing recorded soun d a nd

electronic sou n d sou rces followed. Cage ha d also been on e of th e

most active proselytizers for electronic music through his writ-

ings, as were Edgard Varès e, J oseph Sch illin ger, Leopold Stokow-

sk i, Henr y Cowell, Carlos Ch avez an d PERCY GRAINGER. It was

during the 1930’s that Grainger seriously began to pursue the

building of technological tools capable of realizing his radical

concept of FREE MUSIC nota ted as spa t ia l non- tempered s t ruc-

tu res on graph pa per. He comp osed su ch a work for an ens embleof four Theremins (1937) and began to collaborate with Burnett

Cross t o design a s eries of synch ronized oscil la tor inst ru men ts

controlled by a paper tape roll mechanism. These instruments

saw a n u mb er of incarna tions u nti l Grainger’s death in 1961.

In 193 9 Homer Du dley created t h e voder an d th e vocoder for

non -mu sical applications ass ociated with s peech an alysis. The

VODER was a keyboard-operated encoding ins tru men t consist-

ing of ban dpas s cha nn els for the simu lation of resonan ces in th e

hu ma n voice. It also cont ained tone an d n oise sou rces for imitating

vowels a nd consona nts . The VOCODER was the correspond ing

decoder which consisted of an analyzer and synthesizer foranalyzing and then reconsti tut ing the same speech. Besides

being one of th e first s oun d m odification devices, th e vocoder was

to take on an important role in electronic music as a voice

process ing device th at is still widely in u se tod ay.

The im porta nt tech nical achievemen ts of th e 1930’s included

the first successful te levision transmission and major innova-

t ions in au dio recording. Since th e tu rn of the centu ry, research

into improving upon the magnetic wire recorder, invented by

VALDEMAR POULSEN, had steadily progressed. A variety of

improvements ha d been ma de, most n otably the u se of e lectrical



29

D A V I D D U N N

amplification and the invention of the Alternating Current bias

technique. The next ma jor imp rovement was th e replacement of

wire with st eel ba nd s, a fairly su ccessful techn ology tha t played

a s ignificant role in th e secret p olice of th e Nazi par ty. The Ger ma n

scientist Fritz Pfleumer had begun to experiment with oxide-

coated paper and plast ic tape as early as 1927 and the I .G.Farben indu strie intr oduced th e first pra ctical plast ic recording

tape in 1932. The m ost s uccessful of the ear ly ma gnetic recording

devices was un doubt edly the AEG Magnetophone introdu ced in

1935 at the Berlin Radio Fair. This device was to become the

prototypical ma gnetic tape recorder a nd was vastly su perior to th e

wire recorders t hen in u se. By 1945 the Magnetophone ad opted

oxide-coated p ap er ta pe. After World War II the pa ten ts for th is

technology were trans fered to the Un ited Sta tes a s war booty an d

fu rth er imp rovemen ts in tap e techn ology progress ed ther e. Wide-

sprea d commercial ma nu factu ring and distr ibut ion of ma gnetic

tape recorders becam e a reality by 1950.The influence of World War II upon the arts was obviously

dra stic. Most experimen tal creative activity ceased a nd techn ical

inn ovation was almos t exclu sively dominat ed by military needs .

Eu ropean mu sic was th e most seriou sly affected with electronic

music research remaining dormant unti l the la te 1940’s. How-

ever, with ma gnetic tape r ecording techn ology now a rea lity, a n ew

period of rapid innovation took place. At the center of this new

activity was the ascendancy of the tape music studio as both

compos itiona l tool an d resea rch ins titut ion . Tap e recordin g revo-

lutionized electronic music more than any other single event inthat i t provided a f lexible means to both store and manipulate

sou nd events . The res u lt was t he defin ing of electronic mu sic as

a true genre. While the history of this genre before 1950 has

primarily focused upon instrument designers, after 1950 the

emphasis shifts towards the composers who consolidated the

techn ical gains of th e first h alf of th e 20th centu ry.

Jus t p r io r t o the e ve n t o f t he t a pe r e c o rde r , P IERRE

SCHAEFFER had begun his experiments with manipulation of

ph onograph recordings a n d qu ickly evolved a t heoretical position

which he named Musique Concrète in order to emphasize the

scu lptu ral aspect of how the sou nd s were man ipu lated. Scha efferpredominant ly used s ounds of the environment tha t had been

recorded through microphones onto disc and later tape. These

“sou nd objects” were then m an ipu lated as pieces of sou nd tha t

could be sp liced into new time relat ionsh ips, processed th rough

a variety of devices, tr an sp osed to different frequ ency registers

thr ough ta pe speed variat ions , an d u lt imately combined into a

mon tage of variou s m ixtu res of sou nd s ba ck onto tape. In 1 948

Schaeffer was joined by the engineer Jacques Poull in who

su bs equen tly played a significant r ole in t he tech nical evolu tion

of tape m u sic in Fra nce. Tha t sa me year saw th e init ia l broadcast



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of Musique Concrète over French Radio and was billed as a

‘concert de bruits’. The composer PIERRE HENRY then joined

Schaeffer and Poull in in 1949. Together they constructed the

SYMPHONIE POUR UN HOMME SEUL, one of th e tru e clas sics of

the genre completed before they ha d a ccess to tape recorders.

By 195 0 Sch aeffer an d Henr y were workin g with m agnetic tapean d th e evolu tion of mu sique concrète proceeded at a fast pace.

The first pu blic performan ce was given in t ha t s am e year a t th e

École Norm ale de Mus ique. In th e following year, Fren ch Nationa l

Radio inst alled a soph isticated stu dio for the Group for Res ea rch

on Mus ique Concrète . Over th e next few years s ignifican t comp os-

ers b egan to be at tr acted to th e stu dio including Pierre Boulez,

Michel Philippot, Jean Barraqué, Phillipe Arthuys, EDGARD

VARÈSE, an d OLIVIER MESSIAEN. In 195 4 Varès e comp osed th e

tape par t to DÉSERTS for orchest ra an d tape a t th e s tudio and th e

work s aw its infam ous premiere in December of tha t year.

Since Musique Concrète was both a musical and aestheticresearch project, a variety of theoretical writings emerged to

art icu late the movemen t’s pr ogress . Of prin cipa l importa n ce was

Sch aeffer’s book A la recherche d’une musique concrète. In it h e

describes th e grou p’s experiments in a p seu do-scientific m an ner

tha t forms a lexicon of sou nd s a nd their dist inctive chara cteris-

t ics which sh ould determine composit ional cri teria an d organiza-

tion. In collaboration with A. Moles, Schaeffer specified a classi-

fication system for acoustical material according to orders of

ma gnitu de an d other cri teria . In ma ny ways these efforts set th e

direction for th e posit ivist ph ilosophical bias tha t h as dominatedthe “research” emp ha sis of electronic mu sic ins t itu t ions in Fran ce

an d elsewhere.

The s onic and mu sical char acterist ics of early mu sique con-

crète were pejoratively descr ibed by Olivier Messiaen as conta in-

ing a h igh level of su rrea listic agony an d litera ry descriptivism .

Th e movement ’s evolu tion sa w most of th e par ticipa ting compos-

ers in clu ding Sch aeffer m ove away from th e extreme d islocations

of sou nd an d d istort ion a ssociated with i ts early composit ions

an d s imp le techn iqu es. Underlying the early works was a fari ly

cons istent p h ilosoph y best exemp lified by a stat emen t by Schaef-

fer:

“I belong to a gen eration w hich is largely torn by d ua lis m s . The

catechism taught to men w ho are now middle-aged w as a tradi-

tional one, traditionally ab s urd: spirit is oppose d to m atter, poetry

to technique, progress to trad ition, individua l to the group a nd how

m uch else. From a ll this it takes jus t one m ore s tep to conclud e tha t

the world is absurd, full of unbearable contradictions. Thus a

violent d es ire to deny , to des troy one of the concepts , es pecially in

the rea lm of form , w he re, according to Malrau x, the A bs olute is

coined . Fashion faintheartedly a pproved this n ihilism .



31

D A V I D D U N N

If mu s ique concrète w ere to contribute to this m ovem en t, if, has tily

adopted, stupidly understood, it had only to add its additional

bellow ing, its n ew negation, after so m uch s m earing of the lines ,

de nial of golden rules (su ch as that of the s cale), I should consider

my self rather unw elcome. I have the right to jus t ify m y dem and,

and the duty to lead possible successors to this intellectuallyhones t w ork , to the exten t to w hich I hav e helped to discover a new

w ay to create sound, and the mea ns —as yet approxima te—to give

it form.

.. . Photography, whether the fact be denied or admitted, has

comp letely ups et painting, jus t as the recording of sound is about

to ups et m us ic .... For all tha t, trad itiona l m us ic is not de nied ; an y

more than the theatre is s upplanted by the cinem a. Something new

is ad ded : a n ew art of sound . Am I wrong in s till calling it mus ic?”

While the tape studio is still a major technical and creativeforce in electronic mu sic, its early history ma rks a s pecific period

of tech nical a nd stylist ic activity. As recording tech nology began

to reveal itself to composers , man y of whom h ad b een an xious ly

await ing such a breakthrough, some composers began to work

under the auspices of broadcast radio stat ions and recording

stu dios with professional tape recorders a nd test equipmen t in off

hours . Others began to sc roun ge and s hare equipment wherever

possible, forming informal cooperatives based upon available

techn ology. While Schaeffer was defining mu siqu e concrète, oth er

independen t composers were experimen ting with tap e an d elec-tronic soun d sou rces. The end of 1940 ’s s aw French composer

Paul Boisselet compose some of the earliest live performance

works for inst ru men ts, ta pe recorders an d electronic oscilla tors.

In the Un ited States , Bebe and Louis Barron began th eir pioneer-

ing experimen ts with ta pe collage. As ear ly as 1 948 t he Can ad ian

composer/ engineer Hu gh Le Caine was hired by the National

Research Coun cil of Can ad a to begin b u ilding electronic mu sical

in s t rume n t s .

In p ara llel to all of th ese even ts, a n other m ajor lineage of tap e

studio activity began to emerge in Germany. According to the

German ph ysicist Werner Meyer-Eppler the events comprisingthe German electronic music history during this t ime are as

follows. In 1948 the inventor of the Vocoder, Homer Dudley,

dem ons tra ted for Meyer-Epp ler his device. Meyer-Epp ler su bs e-

qu ently us ed a ta pe recording of th e Vocoder to illus tra te a lectu re

h e gave in 194 9 called Deve lopm en tal Poss ibilities of S ound . In th e

au dience was the aforementioned Robert Beyer, n ow employed a t

the Northwest German Radio, Cologne. Beyer must have been

profoun dly impressed by the p resenta tion since i t was decided

that lectures should be formulated on the topic of “electronic

music” for the International Summer School for New Music in



32


Darm stad t th e following year. Much of the s u bsequ ent lecture by

Meyer-Epp ler conta ined m ater ial from h is clas sic book, Electronic

Tone Generation, Electronic Music, and Synthetic Speech .

By 1951 Meyer-Eppler began a series of experiments with

synthetically generated sounds using Harald Bode’s Melochord

an d an AEG m agnet ic tap e recorder. Togeth er with Robert Beyerand Herbert Eimert , Meyer-Eppler presented his research as a

rad io program called “Th e World of Soun d of Electronic Mu sic”

over Germ an Radio, Cologne. This b road cas t h elped to convin ce

officials a n d tech nicians of th e Cologn e rad io st ation to sp ons er

an official studio for electronic music. From its beginning the

COLOGNE STUDIO differen tiated itself from th e Mus ique Con crète

activities in Paris by limiting itself to “pure” electronic sound

sou rces that could be man ipu latd th rough precise composit ional

techniques derived from Serialism.

While one of the earliest compositional outcomes from the

influence of Meyer-Eppler was Bruno Maderna’s collaborationwith h im entitled Musica s u d ue Dim ens ioni for flute, percu ss ion,

and loudspeaker, most of the other works that followed were

strictly concerned with utilizing only electronic sounds such as

pu re sine-waves. One of the first a t temp ts at creating th is labor

inten sive form of stu dio bas ed a dditive syn th esis wa s KARLHEINZ

STOCKHAUSEN who crea ted h is Étude out of pure s ine-waves at

the Paris studio in 1952. Similar works were produced at the

Cologne facilities by Beyer and Eimert at about this time and

subsequently followed by the more sophist icated at tempts by

Stockhausen , Studie I (1953) and STUDIE II (1954). In 1954 apublic concert was presented by Cologne radio that included

works by Stockhausen, Goeyvaerts, Pousseur, Gredinger, and

Eimert . Soon other composers began working at the Cologne

st u dio inclu din g Koen ig, Heiss , Klebe, KAGEL, LIGETI, BRÜN an d

ERNST KRENEK. The later compos er com pleted h is Sp iritus In-

telligentiae Sanctus at the Cologne studio in 1956. This work

along with Stockhausen’s GESA NG DER J ÜNGLINGE , composed

at th e sam e tim e, signify th e end of th e sh ort-lived pu re electronic

emphasis c laimed by the Cologne school. Both works used

electronically-genera ted s oun ds in combination with techniques

and soun d s ources ass ocia ted with mu sique concrè te.While the distinction u su ally posited between th e early Paris

an d Cologne sch ools of tape mu sic composit ion em pha sizes ei ther

the n atu re of the sou nd s ources or the presence of an organ iza-

t iona l bias su ch a s Serial ism , I tend to view this dist inction m ore

in terms of a r eorgan ization a t m id-centu ry of the representa tion-

ist versus modernist dialect which appeared in prior decades.

Even though Schaeffer and his colleagues were consciously

aligned in overt ways with the Futu rists concern with noise, they

tended to rely on dra ma tic expression th at was depen dent u pon

illusionistic associations t o the sou nds u nd ergoing deconstru ction.



33

D A V I D D U N N

The early Cologne s chool ap pear s to ha ve been con cerned with a n

au then tic an d d idactic display of the electronic ma terial an d i ts

prima ry codes a s if it were poss ible to reveal the m etap hysical an d

intrinsic nature of the material as a new perceptual resource.

Obvious ly th e techn ical limitations of th e stu dio at tha t time, in

addit ion to the aesthetic dema nds imp osed by the cur rent issu esof musicality, made their initial pursuit too problematic.

Concurren t with th e tape stu dio developments in France and

German y there were s ignifican t a dvances occuring in t he United

States. While there was not yet any significant institutional

su pport for the experimental work being purs u ed by ind ependent

composers, some informal projects began to emerge. The Music

for Magnetic Tap e Project was form ed in 1 951 by J OHN CAGE, Ea rle

Brown, Christian Wolff, David Tudor, and Morton Feldman and

lasted u nti l 1954. Since the group h ad n o perman ent facil ity, they

relied on borrowed t ime in commercial sou nd stu dios s u ch as tha t

ma inta ined b y Bebe and Louis Barron or u sed borrowed equ ip-ment that they could share. The most important work to have

emerged from this collective was Cage’s WILLIAM’S MIX . The

composit ion used hundreds of prerecorded sounds from the

Barr on’s libra ry as th e sou rce from wh ich t o fu lfill the dem an ds

of a meticulously notated score that specified not only the

categories of sounds to be used at any part icular t ime but a lso

how th e sou nd s were to be sp liced an d edited. The work requ ired

over nine months of intensive labor on the part of Cage, Brown

and Tudor to assemble. While the final work may not have

sounded to untutored ears as very dist inct from the other tapeworks produced in France or Cologne at the same t ime, i t

neverth eless represented a radical composit ional an d p hilosophi-

cal challenge to these other schools of thought.

In the same year as Cage’s William’s Mix , VLADIMIR USSA-

CHEVSKY gave a p u blic dem ons tra tion of his t ape m u sic experi-

ments at Columbia University. Working in almost complete

isolat ion from th e other experimen ters in Eu rope and the Un ited

States, Ussachevsky began to explore tape manipulation of

e lectronic and instru men tal soun ds with very limited resources.

He was soon joined by OTTO LUENING and the two began to

compose in earnest some of the first tape composit ions in theUnited States at the home of Henry Cowell in Woodstock, New

York: Fantas y in Space, Low Speed , and Son ic Contours . The works ,

after com pletion in Us sa ch evsky’s living room in New York a n d in

th e bas emen t st u dio of Artu ro Toscan ini’s Riverda le h ome, were

presen ted at the Mus eum of Modern Art in October of 1952.

Throughout the 1950’s important work in electronic music

experimentation only accelerated at a rapid pace. In 1953 an

Italian electron ic m u sic stu dio (Stu dio de Fonologia) was esta b-

lish ed a t th e Radio Au dizioni Italian e in Milan. Du ring its ear ly

years the st u dio at tra cted man y importa nt intern ationa l figu res



34


inclu din g LUCIANO BERIO, Niccolo Ca st iglioni, Aldo Clem en ti,

Bru n o Mad ern a, LUIGI NONO, J ohn Cage, Henr i Pous seu r, And ré

Boucourechliev, and Bengt Hambra eus . Stud ios were also estab -

l ished at the Phil ips research labs in Eindhoven and at NHK

(J apa nese Broadcasting System ) in 19 55. In th at sa me year th e

David Sarnoff Laboratories of RCA in Princeton, New Jerseyintroduced the OLSON-BELAR SOUND SYNTHESIZER to the

pu blic . As i ts n am e states , this instr um ent is generally cons idered

the first modern “synthesizer” and was built with the specific

intention of synth esizing tradit ional instru men tal t imbres for th e

ma nu factu re of popular m u sic . In a n interest ing reversal of the

usual industria l absorption of art ist ic innovation, the machine

proved inappropriate for i ts original intent and was la ter used

entirely for electronic music experimentation and composition.

Since the device was ba sed u pon a combination of addit ive an d

su btractive synth esis stra tegies, with a control system cons ist ing

of a pu nch ed paper r oll or tab-card programm ing sch eme, it wasan extremely soph isticated inst ru m ent for its time. Not only could

a composer generat e, comb ine a nd filter sou nd s from the m achine’s

tu ning-fork oscilla tors an d wh ite-noise generators, s oun ds could

be input from a microphone for modification. Ultimately the

device’s design philosophy favored fairly classical concepts of

mu sical stru cture su ch as precise control of twelve-tone pitch

ma terial and wa s th erefore favored by compos ers working with in

the serial genre.

The first composers to work with the Olson-Belar Sound

Synthesizer (later known as the RCA Music Synthesizer) wereVLADIMIR USS ACHE VSKY, O TTO LEUNING a n d MILTON BAB-

BITT who ma na ged to initially gain access to it at t he RCA Lab s.

Within a few years this trio of composers in addition to Roger

Sessions m an aged to acqu ire the device on a perma nen t bas is for

th e newly esta blish ed Colu m bia-Princeton Electronic Mus ic Cent er

in New York City. Becau se of its ad van ced facilities an d p olicy of

encoura gemen t to contempora ry composers, the center a t tracted

a large nu m ber of intern ationa l figu res s u ch a s ALICE SHIELDS,

PRIL SMILEY, Michiko Toyam a, Bü lent Arel, Mar io Davidovsk y,

Halim El-Dabh , Mel Powell , Ja cob Druckm an , Cha rles Wourinen,

an d Edgard Varèse.In 1 958 t he Universi ty of Illinois a t Cha mp aign/ Urban a esta b-

lished the Studio for Experimental Music. Under the initial

direction of LEJ AREN HILLER th e st u dio becam e one of the m ost

important centers for e lectronic music research in the United

States. Two years earlier, Hiller, who was also a professional

chem ist, ap plied h is scientific knowledge of digital comp u ters to

th e comp osition of th e ILLIAC S UITE FOR S TRING QUARTET , one

of the first a t tempts at s erious compu ter-aided m u sical composi-

t ion. In su bsequ ent years th e resident facu lty conn ected with the

Studio for Experimental Music included composers HERBERT



35

D A V I D D U N N

BRÜN, KENNETH GABURO , a n d S ALVATORE MARTIRANO alon g

with the engineer James Beauchamp whose Harmonic Tone

Generator was one of the m ost interest ing special soun d generat-

ing ins tru men ts of the period.

By th e end of th e decade PIERRE SCHAEFFER h ad r eorgan-

ized th e Paris stu dio into th e Groupe de Recherches de Musicalesand had abandoned the term musique concrète . His staff was

joined a t th is time by LUC FERRARI an d Fra nçois-Berna rd Mach e,

an d later by Fran çois Ba yle an d Berna rd Parm egiani. The Greek

compos er, a rch itect a n d m ath ema tician YANNIS XENAKIS wa s

also working at the Paris facil i ty as was LUCIANO BERIO.

Xena kis produ ced his clas sic compos ition DIAMORPHOSES in 195 7

in which h e formu lated a t heory of dens ity chan ge which intro-

duced a new ca tegory of sounds and s t ruc ture in to musique

concrète.

In addit ion to th e ma jor techn ical developments an d bu rgeon-

ing stu dios jus t outl ined th ere was a lso a dra ma tic increas e in th eactu al composit ion of su bsta ntial works. From 1950 to 196 0 th e

vocabu lary of tap e mu sic sh ifted from th e fairly pu re experiment al

works wh ich ch ara cterized the class ic Paris an d Cologn e schools

to more complex and expressive works which explored a wide

range of compositional styles. More and more works began to

appea r by the m id-1950’s wh ich a ddress ed th e concept of com-

bining taped sou nd s with l ive ins tru men ts a nd voices. There was

also a tentat ive interest , and a few attempts, a t incorporating

taped electronic soun ds into th eatrical works. While the ran ge of

issu es being explored was extrem ely broa d, mu ch of th e work inthe variou s ta pe stu dios was an extens ion of the Serialism which

dominated instrumental music . By the end of the decade new

stru ctura l concepts began to emerge from working with th e new

electronic sound sources that influenced instrumental music .

This expan sion of t imbral an d organizationa l resources br ought

strict Serialism into question.

In order to summarize the activity of the classic tape studio

period a b rief su rvey of som e of th e ma jor works of th e 195 0’s is

called for. This list is not intended to be exhaustive but only to

provide a few points of reference:

194 9) Scha effer an d Henr y: S YMPHONIE POUR UN HOMME S EUL

1951) Grainger: FREE MUSIC

1952 ) Maderna: Musica s u d ue Dim ens ioni; Cage: William’s Mix ;

Leuning: Fantas y in S pace; Ussa chevsky: Sonic Contours ; Brau :

Concerto de Jan vier

1953) Schaeffer and Henry: ORPHÉE ; S tockhausen: Studie I



36


1954) Varèse: DÉSERTS ; S tockhausen: Stud ie II ; Leun ing and

Ussachevsky: A Poem in Cycles and Bells

1955 ) B. & L. Barron: sou nd track to Forbidd en Planet

1956) Krenek: Spiritus Intelligentiae Sanctus ; S toc kha use n :GES ANG DER J ÜNGLINGE ; Berio: Mutazioni; Madern a: Notturno;

Hiller: ILLIAC SUITE FOR STRING QUARTET

1957) Xenakis: DIAMORPHOSES; Pousseur : Scambi; Badings:

Evolutionen

1958) Varèse: POÈME ÉLECTRONIQUE; Ligeti: ARTIKULATION ;

Kagel: Transición I ; Cage: FONTANA MIX ; Berio: THEMA—

OMAGGIO A JOYCE ; Xenakis: Concret P-H II ; Pousseu r : RIMES

POUR DIFFÉRENTES SOURCES SONORES

19 59 ) Kagel: Transición II ; Cage: INDETERMINACY

1960) Berio: Differences ; Gerhard: Collages ; Maxfield: NIGHT

MUSIC ; Ashley: The Fourth of July ; Takemitsu: Water Music;

Xenakis: Orient-Occident III

By 1960 the evolution of the tape studio was progressingdram atically. In Eu rope the inst i tu t iona l sup port only increased

and saw a mu tua l in te res t a r i se from both th e broadcast cente rs

an d from acad emia. For insta nce i t was in 1 960 th at th e electronic

mu sic studio at the Philips research labs was tr an sferred to the

INSTITUTE OF SONOLOGY at t h e Univers ity of Utrech t. While

in the United States i t was always the universi t ies that estab-

lished serious electronic music facilities, that situation was

problema tic for certain composers wh o resisted the ins t i tut iona l

mileau. Composers such as Gordon MUMMA and ROBERT

ASHLEY h ad b een working ind epen den tly with t ap e mu sic since

1956 by gath ering together th eir own techn ical resources. Othercomposers who were interested in u sing electronics foun d th at

the ta pe medium was u ns u ited to their ideas. J OHN CAGE, for

instance, came to reject the whole aesthetic that accompanied

tap e comp osition as incompa tible with h is philosoph y of indeter-

mina cy and live performan ce. Some composers began to s eek out

other technical solutions in order to specify more precise com-

posit ional control than the tape s tu dio could provide th em. It was

into th is climate of sh ifting needs th at a variety of n ew electronic

devices em erged.

The coming of the 1960’s saw a gradual cultural revolution



37

D A V I D D U N N

which was co-synchronous with a dist inct acceleration of new

m edia techn ologies. While the invention of th e tran sistor in 1 948

at Bell Laboratories h ad begun to imp act e lectronic ma nu factu r-

ing, i t was during the early 1960’s that major advances in

electronic design took shape. The subsequent innovations and

their impact upon electronic music were multifold and anyunderstanding of them must be couched in separate categories

for th e sa ke of convenience. Th e categories to b e delinea ted a re 1)

th e emergen ce of th e voltage-contr olled a na log synth esizer; 2) th e

evolution of computer music; 3) live electronic performance

practice; and 4) the explosion of multi-media. However, it is

important tha t the read er appreciate that th e techn ical categories

u nd er discus sion were never exclu sive bu t in fact interpen etrated

freely in th e comp osition al an d perform an ce styles of m u sician s.

It is a lso n ecess ary to point out tha t an y chara cterization of one

form of techn ical means as su perior to an other (i .e . comp u ters

versu s s ynthesizers) is n ot inten tiona l . It is th e au thor’s conten -t ion th at th e very na tu re of the s ymbiosis between m achine an d

art ist is su ch th at each ins tru men t, stu dio facility, or comp ut er

program yields i ts own working method and unique art ist ic

produce. Preferences between technological resources emerge

from a match between a certain machine and the imaginative

intent of an art ist , an d n ot from qu alit ies th at a re hierarchically

germane to the history of technological innovation. Claims for

tech n ological efficien cy ma y be relevan t to a very lim ited con text

bu t are u lt ima tely absu rd when viewed from a broader pers pec-

tive of actu al creat ive ach ievemen t.

1 ) T H E V O L T A G E - C O N T R O L L E D

A N A L O G S Y N T H E S I Z E R

A definition : Unfortu n ately th e term “syn th esizer” is a gross

misnomer. Since there is nothing synthetic about the sounds

generat ed from th is c lass of an alog electronic ins tru men ts, an d

since they do not “synth esize” other sou nd s, th e term is m ore the

result of a conceptual confusion emanating from industria l

nonsense about how these instruments “imitate” tradit ionalacoustic ones. However, since the term has stuck, becoming

progress ively more ingrained over th e years, I will u se th e term for

th e s ake of convenience. In reality the a na log voltage-controlled

synthesizer is a collection of waveform and noise generators,

modifiers (such as filters, ring modulators, amplifiers), mixers

an d control devices pa ckaged in modu lar or int egrated form. The

generators produce an electronic signal which can be patched

through the modifiers and into a mixer or amplifier where it is

ma de au dible throu gh lou dspea kers. This s equence of intercon-

nections consti tutes a signa l path which is determined by mean s



38


of patch cords, switches, or matrix pinboards. Changes in the

behaviors of the devices (such as pitch or loudness) along the

signal path are controlled from other devices which produce

contr ol voltages. Th ese contr ol voltage sources can be a keyboar d,

a ribbon con troller, a ran dom voltage sou rce, an en velope gener a-

tor or an y oth er compa tible voltage source.The story of th e an alog “syn th esizer” h as n o single beginn ing.

In fact, its genesis is a n excellen t exam ple of how a good idea often

emerges simu ltan eous ly in different geograph ic locations to fulfill

a generalized n eed. In this cas e the n eed was to consolidate th e

various electronic sou nd genera tors, m odifiers an d contr ol de-

vices distribu ted in fairly bu lky form th rou ghou t the class ic tap e

stu dio. The reason for doing th is was quite stra ight forward: to

provide a person al electronic system to ind ividua l compos ers th at

was s pecifically design ed for mu sic composition a nd / or live

performan ce, an d which ha d th e approxima te technical capab il-

ity of th e clas sic tap e st u dio at a lower cost. The geogra ph ic localeswhere this simultaneously occurred were the east coast of the

United States, San Fran cisco, Rome an d Aus tral ia .

The concept of modu lari ty us u ally ass ociated with t he an alog

synthesizer must be credited to Harald Bode who in 1960

completed the construction of his MODULAR SOUND MODIFI-

CATION SYSTEM. In m an y ways th is device pred icted th e m ore

concise and powerful modular synthesizers that began to be

designed in the early 1960 ’s an d cons isted of a r ing m odulator,

envelope follower, tone-burst-responsive envelope generator,

voltage-controlled amplifier, filters, mixers, pitch extractor,compara tor an d frequen cy divider, an d a tape loop repeater. This

device ma y have ha d som e in direct in fluen ce on Robert Moog bu t

th e idea for h is modu lar synt hes izer app ears to ha ve evolved from

an other set of c ircum sta nces.

In 1963, MOOG was selling transistorized Theremins in kit

form from his home in Ithaca, New York. Early in 1964 the

composer Herbert Deutsch was using one of these instruments

and the two began to discuss the application of solid-state

technology to the design of new ins tru men ts a nd s ystems. These

discu ss ions led Moog to complete his first pr ototype of a m odu lar

electronic music synthesizer la ter that year. By 1966 the firstprodu ction m odel was a vailable from th e new compan y he ha d

formed to produ ce this instru men t. The first systems which Moog

produced were principally designed for studio applications and

were generally large modular assemblages that contained volt-

age-controlled oscillators, filters, voltage-controlled amplifiers,

envelope generat ors, a nd a t rad itiona l style keyboard for voltage-

control of the other m odules. Interconn ection between th e mod-

u les was a chieved throu gh patch cords. By 1969 Moog saw th e

necessity for a sma ller portable ins tru men t and b egan t o man u -

factu re th e Mini Moog, a concise vers ion of the st u dio system t h at



39

D A V I D D U N N

conta ined a n oscillator ba n k, filter, mixer, VCA an d k eyboard. As

an instru men t des igner Moog was always a practical engineer. His

ba sically comm ercial bu t egalitar ian p hilosoph y is bes t exempli-

fied by some of th e advertising copy which a ccompa nied th e Mini

Moog in 1969 an d resu lted in i ts becoming the m ost widely us ed

synth esizer in t he “mu sic indu stry”:

“R.A. Moog, Inc. built its first s y nth es izer comp onen ts in 19 64 . At

that t ime, the electronic music synthesizer was a cumbersome

laboratory curiosity, virtua lly un k now n to the lis ten ing pu blic.

Toda y , the Moog sy nthe s ize r ha s proven its indispe ns ability th rough

its widespread acceptance. Moog synthesizers are in use in hun-

dreds of s tudios ma intained by universities , recording com pan ies ,

and private compose rs throughout the w orld. Dozen s of su cces sfu l

recordings, film scores , and concert pieces hav e be en realize d on

Moog s yn thes ize rs . The bas ic sy nthes izer concept as d eveloped by

R.A. Moog, Inc., as w ell as a large nu m ber of technological inn ova-tions , have literally revolutionized th e contem porary m us ical s cene ,

and hav e be en ins trum ental in bringing electronic m us ic into the

m ainstream of popular listen ing.

In d es igning the Mini Moog, R. A. Moog en gine ers ta lked w ith

hund reds of mu sicians to f ind out w hat they w anted in a perform-

ance s yn thesizer. Many prototypes w ere built over the pas t tw o

years, and tried out by musicians in actual live-performance

situations. Mini Moog circuitry is a combination of our time-proven

and reliable designs with the latest developments in technologyand electronic components .

The resu lt is an ins trum ent w hich is applicable to stu dio composi-

tion as m uch as to live pe rform ance, to elem entary and high s chool

music education as much as to university instruction, to the

demands of commercial music as much as to the needs of the

experimental avant garde. The Mini Moog offers a truly unique

combina tion of vers atility , play ability , conven ience, an d reliab ility

at an em inen tly reasonab le price.”

In contrast to Moog’s industria l stance, the rather counter-cu ltu ra l design ph ilosop h y of DONALD BUCHLA an d h is voltage-

controlled synthesizers can partially be attributed to the geo-

graphic locale and cultural c ircumstances of their genesis. In

1961 San Fran cisco was beginning to emerge as a m ajor cultur al

center with several van guard comp osers organizing concerts a nd

other performance events. MORTON SUBOTNICK was starting

h is career in electronic mu sic experimen tat ion, a s were PAULINE

OLIVEROS, Ram on Sen der a n d TERRY RILEY. A pr imitive stu dio

ha d been st arted at t he San Fran cisco Cons ervatory of Music by

Sender wh ere he an d Oliveros ha d begun a s eries of experimental



40


mu sic concerts. In 196 2 this equipment a nd oth er resources from

electronic su rplus sou rces were pooled together b y Sender an d

Su botnick to form th e San Fran cisco Tape Mus ic Center which

was later m oved to Mills College in 1 966 . Becau se of the s evere

limitat ions of the equipmen t, Sub otnick an d Sender s ought ou t

the h elp of a comp etent engineer in 1962 to realize a design theyhad concocted for an optically based sound generating instru-

men t. After a few failu res a t h irin g an engineer th ey met DONALD

BUCHLA who realized their design but subsequently convinced

them tha t th is was th e wrong approach for s olving th eir equip-

ment needs . The ir s ubs equent d iscus sions resu l ted in th e con-

cept of a m odular s ystem. Su botnick describes th eir idea in the

following terms:

“Our idea w as to build th e black box tha t w ould b e a palette for

com posers in their home s . It w ould be th eir s tudio. The idea w as to

des ign it so that it w as lik e an a nalog com puter. It w as not a mu sicalins trum ent bu t it w as m odular.. .It w as a collection of modules of

voltage-controlled en velope gene rators a nd it ha d s eque ncers in it

right off the bat.. .It w as a collection of modu les that y ou w ould put

together. There w ere no tw o sy stem s the sa me until CBS bought

it. . .Our goal was that it should be under $400 for the entire

instrument and we came very close. That’s why the original

ins trum ent I fundraised for wa s und er $500.”

Bu chla’s design a ppr oach differed m ar kedly from Moog. Right

from th e sta rt Bu chla rejected the idea of a “synth esizer” an d h asresisted the word ever since. He never wanted to “synthesize”

fam iliar s oun ds b ut rath er emph asized n ew timb ral possibil it ies.

He stress ed the complexity tha t could arise out of ran domn ess

and was intrigued with the design of new control devices other

than the s tan dard keyboard . He su mm arizes h is ph ilosophy an d

distingu ishes it from Moog’s in th e followin g sta temen t:

“I w ould sa y th at ph ilosoph ically th e prim e difference in our

approaches was that I separated sound and structure and he

didn’t. Control voltages were interchangeable with audio. The

ad van tage of that is that he required only one k ind of connector and that modules could serve more than one purpose. There were

s everal draw back s to that k ind of general approach, one of them

being that a m odule des igned to w ork in the s tructural dom ain at

the sa me t ime as the aud io doma in has to ma ke compromises . DC

offset doesn’t make any difference in the sound domain but it

m ak es a big difference in the structural dom ain, wh ereas h armonic

dis tortion m ak es very little d ifference in the control area b ut it can

be ve ry s ignificant in the aud io areas . You also have a m atter of jus t

being able to discern w hat’s h appen ing in a s y stem by look ing at

it. If you h av e a v ery com plex pa tch, it’s nice to be a ble to tell w ha t



41

D A V I D D U N N

as pect of the patch is the structural part of the mu sic vers us w hat

is the s ignal path an d s o on. There’s a big difference in w hethe r you

de al w ith linea r versus exponen tial functions at the control level

and that was a very inhibiting factor in Moog’s more general

approach.

Uncertainty is the b as is for alot of my w ork . One alwa y s operates

s omew here betw een the totally predictable and the totally u npre-

dictable an d to me the “s ource of uncertainty ,” as w e called it, w as

a w ay of aiding the compos er. The pred ictabilities could be h ighly

de fined or y ou could ha ve a s equen ce of totally rand om nu m bers.

We h ad voltage control of the rand omne ss and of the rate of chan ge

so that you could randomize the rate of change. In this way you

could ma k e patterns that w ere of more interest than pa tterns that

are totally random .”

While the early Buchla instruments contained many of thesa me modu lar fu nctions a s the Moog, i t a lso contained a num ber

of unique devices such as i ts random control voltage sources,

sequencers and voltage-controlled spatial panners. Buchla has

maintained his unique design philosphy over the intervening

years produ cing a series of highly advanced instru men ts often

incorporating hybrid digital circuitry and unique control inter-

faces.

The oth er ma jor voltage-contr olled syn th esizers to ar ise at th is

t ime (1964) were th e Synket, a highly portable ins tru men t bu il t by

Pau l Ketoff, an d a u nique m achine d esigned by Tony Fur se inAustralia. According to composer Joel Chadabe, the SYNKET

resulted from discussions between himself , Otto Leuning and

J OHN EATON while th ese composers were in residence in Rome.

Don Buch la in his Berkeley, Ca lifornia studio w ith seve ral of his c reat ions, late 1970’s. Co ute sy of Do n Buchla .



42


Chadabe had recently inspected the developmental work of

Robert Moog and conveyed this to Eaton and Leuning. The

engineer Pau l Ketoff was enlisted to bu ild a perform an ce oriented

instru men t for Eaton who su bsequ ently became the virtu oso on

this s ma ll synthesizer, us ing i t extensively in su bsequ ent years.

The machine built by Furse was the initial foray into electronicinstru men t design by th is bri lliant Austra lian en gineer. He later

becam e the p rincipal figu re in th e design of som e of th e earliest

an d m ost s ophist icated d igital synth esizers of the 1 970’s.

After th ese initial efforts a n u m ber of oth er Amer ican des ign ers

an d m an u factu rers followed th e lead of Buch la an d Moog. One of

th e mos t su ccessful was th e ARP SYNTHESIZER bu ilt by Tonu s,

Inc. with design innovations by the team of Dennis Colin and

David Friend. The studio version of the ARP was introduced in

1970 an d ba sically imitated m odular featu res of the Moog an d

Buchla instruments. A year la ter they introduced a smaller

portable version wh ich included a p reset patch ing scheme tha tsimp lified th e in str u men t’s fun ction for the average pop-orien ted

performing mu sician . Other man u factu rers inclu ded EML, makers

of th e ELECTRO-COMP, a sm all synt hes izer oriented to th e edu -

cationa l mar ket; OBERHIEM, on e of th e earliest p olyphon ic syn-

th esizers ; m u Son ics’ SONIC V SYNTHES IZER; PAIA, m ak ers of a

synthesizer in kit form; Roland; Korg; and the highly sophisti-

cated l ine of modu lar an alog synthesizer s ystems d esigned a nd

manufactured by Serge Tcherepnin and referred to as Serge

Modu lar Mu sic System s.

In Europe the major man ufacturer was un doubt edly EMS, aBritish company founded by its chief designer Peter Zinovieff.

EMS buil t the Synthi 100, a large integrated system which

introduced a matrix-pinboard patching system, and a small

portable synthesizer based on similar design principles initially

called t he Put ney b u t later m odified into th e SYNTHI A or Port-

abella . This la ter ins tru men t became very popular with a nu mb er

of composers who used it in live performance situations.

One of the more interesting footnotes to this history of the

analog synthesizer is the rather problematic relat ionship that

ma ny of the des igners h ave had with commercialization an d th e

subsequent solution of manufacturing problems. While thecommercial potential for th ese instru men ts became evident very

early on in th e 1960 ’s, th e different a esth etic an d des ign p hiloso-

ph ies of the en gineers dema nded tha t th ey deal with this realiza-

tion in different ways. Bu chla, wh o early on got bu rn t by larger

corporate interests, has dealt with the burden of marketing by

essen tially remaining a cottage indu stry, ass embling an d m arket-

ing his instru men ts from h is h ome in Berkeley, California . In the

case of MOOG, who a s a fairly comp etent bu sinessm an grew a

sm all bu siness in his h ome into a dist inctly comm ercial endeavor,

even h e ultima tely left Moog Mu sic in 1 977 , after th e com pan y had



43

D A V I D D U N N

been acquired by two larger corporations, to pursue his own

design interests .

I t is important to remember that the advent of the analog

voltage-contr olled synth esizer occurr ed within th e context of th e

continu ed development of the ta pe stu dio which n ow included th e

synthesizer as an essential part of i ts new identi ty as theelectronic mu sic studio. It was est imated in 196 8 tha t 556 n on-

private electronic music studios had been established in 39

count ries. An est imated 5,14 0 composit ions existed in the m e-

dium by tha t t ime .

Some of the lan dm ark voltage-contr olled “syn th esizer” compo-

sitions of the 1960’s include works created with the “manufac-

tured” machines of Buchla and Moog but other devices were

certainly also used extensively. Most of these works were tape

composit ions tha t u sed t he s ynthesizer as resour ce. The following

list includes a few of the representative tape compositions and

works for ta pe with live performer s m ade du ring the 19 60’s withsynthesizers and o ther sound s ources .

1960) Stockhau sen: KONTAKTE ; Mache: Volumes ;

1961) Berio: VISAGE ; Dockstader: TWO FRAGMENTS FROM

APOCALYPSE

1962) Xenakis: BOHOR I ; Philippot: Étude III ; Parmegiani:

DANSE;

1963) Bayle : PORTRAITS DE L’OISEAU-QUI-N’EXISTE-PAS ;

Nordheim: EPITAFFIO

1964 ) Babbit t : Ensem bles for Sy nthesizer ; Brün : Futility ; Nono:

LA FABBRICA ILLUMINATA

1965) Gaburo: LEMON DROPS, Mima roglu : Agony ; Davidovsky:

Sy nchronism s No. 3 ;

1966) Oliveros: I OF IV ; Druckman: Animu s I ;

1967 ) Su botnick: S ILVER APPLES OF THE MOON ; Eaton: CON-

CERT PIECE FOR S YN-KET AND SYMPHONY ORCHES TRA; Koenig:

Terminus X ; Sm iley: ECLIPSE ;

1968) Carlos: Switched-On Bach ; Gaburo: DANTE’S JOYNTE ;

Nono: CONTRA PPUNTO DIALETTICO ALLA MENTE



44


1969 ) Wuorinen: TIME’S ENCOMIUM ; Ferrari: MUSIC PROME-

NADE

19 70 ) Arel: S tereo Electronic Mus ic No. 2; Lu cier: I AM S ITTING IN

A ROOM

2 ) C O M P U T E R M U S I C

A distinction : Analog refers to systems where a physical

qua nti ty is repres ented by an an alogou s ph ysical qua nti ty. The

tradit ional audio recording chain demonstrates this quite well

since each stage of tran slat ion th roughou t cons ti tutes a ph ysical

system th at is an alogou s to th e previous one in th e chain. The

flu ctua tions of a ir molecules which consti tute s oun d are tra ns -

lated into flu ctua tions of e lectrons by a m icrophone diaph ram .

Thes e electrons are th en converted via a bias cu rrent of a ta perecorder into patterns of magnetic particles on a piece of tape.

Upon playback the process can be reversed result ing in these

fluctuations of electrons being amplified into fluctuations of a

loudspeaker cone in space. The final displacement of air mole-

cules results in an analogous representation of the original

sounds that were recorded. Digital refers to systems where a

ph ysical qua nti ty is repres ented th rough a count ing process. In

digital computers this counting process consists of a two-digit

binary coding of electrical on-off switching states. In computer

mu sic the resultan t digita l code represents the various p aram e-ters of sou nd an d i ts organ ization.

As early as 195 4, th e comp oser YANNIS XENAKIS h ad u sed a

compu ter to a id in calculating th e velocity tra jectories of glissa n di

for his orch estr al composition Metastasis . Since his backgroun d

inc luded a s t rong mathema t ica l educa t ion , th is was a n a tu ra l

development in keeping with his formal interest in combining

math emat ics and mu sic. The search th a t h ad begun ear l ie r in th e

centu ry for new soun ds a nd organ izing principles th at could be

ma them atically rat ionalized h ad b ecome a dominan t issu e by the

mid-1950’s. Serial composers like MILTON BABBIT had been

dream ing of an app ropriate m achine to as sist in complex com-pos ition al organ izat ion. While th e RCA Mus ic Synth esizer fu lfilled

mu ch of this need for Babb it t , other composers d esired even more

ma chine-a ss isted contr ol. LEJ AREN HILLER, a former s tu den t of

Babbitt, saw the compositional potential in the early generation

of digital computers and generated the Illiac Suite for string

qua rtet as a dem onstr at ion of this promise in 19 56.

Xenak is continu ed to develop, in a m u ch m ore sophist icated

man ner , h is u n ique approach to compu ter-ass is ted ins t ru menta l

composit ion. Between 19 56 an d 1962 h e composed a n u mber of

works such as Morisma-Amorisma using the computer as a



45

D A V I D D U N N

m ath ema tical aid for finalizing calcu lations th at were ap plied to

instru men tal scores. Xenak is s tated th at h is u se of probabilist ic

theories a nd the IBM 7090 compu ter enab led h im to advance “. . .a

form of compos ition wh ich is not th e object in itelf, bu t an idea in

itself, th at is to sa y, the b eginn ings of a fam ily of compos itions .”

The ear ly vision of why compu ters s h ould be ap plied to mu sicwas elegan tly express ed by the s cient ist Hein z Von Foerst er:

“Accepting the possibilities of extensions in sounds and scales,

how d o we d etermine the new rules of sy nchronism and s ucces-

sion?

It is at this point, w here the com plexity of the problem a ppea rs to

get out of han d, that compu ters com e to our as sistan ce, not m erely

as ancillary tools but as essential components in the complex

process of gen erating aud itory s igna ls tha t fulfill a va riety of new

principles of a generalized aesthetics and are not confined toconven tional methods of s ound gene ration by a given s et of m us ical

ins trum ents or scales n or to a given s et of rules of sy nchronism and

succession based upon these very instruments and scales. The

search for those new principles, algorithms, and values is, of

course, in its elf sy m bolic for our tim es .”

The actual use of the computer to generate sound first

occurr ed at Bell Labs where Max Math ews u sed a primitive digital

to analog converter to demonstrate this possibil i ty in 1957.

Mathews becam e th e central figu re at Bell Labs in th e techn icalevolution of computer generated sound research and composi-

t iona l program ming with compu ter over th e next decade. In 196 1

h e was joined by the comp oser J AMES TENNEY who h ad r ecently

graduated from the University of Illinois where he had worked

with Hiller and Ga bu ro to finish a ma jor th eoretical thes is entitled

Meta —/ Hod os For Tenn ey, the Bell Lab residen cy was a signifi-

cant opportunity to apply his advanced theoretical thinking

(involving the application of theories from Gestalt Psychology to

music and sound perception) into the composit ional domain.

From 19 61 to 19 64 h e comp leted a s eries of works which includ e

what are p robably the first serious composit ions us ing the MUSICIV program of Max Mathews and Joan Miller and therefore the

first serious composit ions using computer-generated sounds:

Nois e S tudy , Four Stochastic Studies , Dialogue , Stochastic String

Qua rtet, Ergodos I, Ergodos II, an d PHAS ES.

In the following extraordinarily candid statement, Tenney

descr ibes h is pioneering efforts at Bell Lab s:

“I arrived at the Bell Telephone Lab oratories in S epte m ber, 196 1,

w ith the follow ing m us ical and intellectual baggage:

1. n um erous ins trum ental compositions reflecting the influen ce of



46


Webern and Varèse;

2. tw o tape-pieces , produ ced in the Electronic Mus ic Laboratory at

the University of Illinois - both employing familiar, ‘concrete’

sound s, m odif ied in various w ay s;

3. a long pape r (“Meta —/ Hod os , A Phe nom enology of 20th Centu ry

Music and an Approach to the Study of Form”, June, 1961), inw hich a de s criptive term inology an d certain s tructural principles

w ere dev eloped , borrow ing he avily from Ges talt psy chology . The

central point of the pa per involves the clang , or prim ary au ral Ges talt,

an d ba s ic law s of perceptual organiza tion of clan gs, clan g-eleme nts ,

and sequences (a high-order Gestalt-unit consisting of several

clangs).

4. A d iss atis faction w ith all the p urely sy nthetic electronic mu s ic

that I had hea rd up to that time, pa rticularly w ith respe ct to t imbre ;

5. idea s s tem m ing from m y s tudies of acous tics, electronics an d -

especially - information theory, begun in Hiller’s class at the

University of Illinois; and finally6. a grow ing interest in the w ork a nd idea s of John Cage.

I leave in March, 1964, with:

1. s ix tape -com positions of computer-generated soun ds - of w hich

all but the first w ere also com posed by m ean s of the com puter, and

s everal ins trum ental pieces w hose com position involved the com-

puter in one w ay or another;

2. a far better und erstand ing of the phy s ical bas is of t imbre , an d

a s ens e of having achieved a s ignificant extens ion of the range of

t imbres poss ible by sy nthetic mean s;

3. a curious history of renunciations of one after another of thetrad itional attitude s about m us ic, due prim arily to grad ually m ore

thorough as s im ilation of the ins ights of John Cage.

In m y tw o-and -a-half yea rs here I hav e begun m any m ore comp o-

s itions tha n I have completed, as k ed m ore ques tions tha n I could

find answers for, and perhaps failed more often than I have

s ucceeded . But I think it could n ot have bee n m uch different. The

med ium is ne w and requires n ew w ay s of think ing and feeling. Two

y ears a re hardly enough to hav e become th oroughly acclim ated to

it, but the proces s h as at leas t begun.”

In 1965 the research at Bell Labs resulted in the successfulreproduction of an instru men tal t imb re: a tru mp et waveform was

recorded an d then converted into a nu merical representa tion a nd

when converted back into analog form was deemed virtually

indistingu isab le from its sou rce. This a ccomp lishm ent by Mathews,

Miller an d th e Fren ch com poser J EAN-CLAUDE RISSET ma rks

th e beginn ing of th e recapitulation of th e traditional represen ta-

tionist versus modernist dialectic in the new context of digital

compu ting. When contras ted against Tenn ey’s u se of the com-

pu ter to obta in entirely novel waveforms an d str u ctu ral com plexi-

t ies, th e u se of su ch imm ense techn ological resources to repro-duce the s ound of a t ru mpet , appeared to man y composers to be



47

D A V I D D U N N

a gigan tic exercise in misplaced concreteness . When seen in the

su bsequ ent historical light of the recent b reakth roughs of digita l

recording and s am pling technologies th at can be traced back to

th is initial experiment , the original comp u ting expen se certain ly

ap pear s t o ha ve been vind icated. However, th e dialectic of repre-

sent ationism a nd m odernism h as on ly become m ore problema ticin the intervening years.

The development of computer music has from its inception

been s o crit ically linked to a dvances in ha rdware a nd software

tha t i ts pra ctit ioners ha ve, un ti l recently, consti tut ed a dist inct

class of specialized enthusiasts within the larger context of

e lectronic mu sic . The ch allenge that early comp u ters a nd com-

puting environments presented to creative musical work was

immen se. In r etrospect , the task of learn ing to program an d pit

one’s musical intel l igence against the machine constraints of

those ear ly days n ow takes on an almost h eroic aire . In fact , the

developmen t of compu ter m u sic compos ition is d efinitely linkedto the evolution of greater interface trans paren cy such tha t th e

task of composit ion could be freed up from the other arduous

tas ks as sociated with p rogram ming. The first stage in th is evolu -

t ion was the d esign of specific mu sic-oriented p rogram s su ch a s

MUSIC IV. Th e 1960 ’s s aw gradu al add itions to th ese langu ages

such as MUSIC IVB (a greatly expanded assembly language

version b y Godfrey Win h am an d Hu ber t S. Howe); MUSIC IVBF (a

fortra n version of MUSIC IVB); an d MUSIC360 (a m u sic pr ogram

written for th e IBM 360 comp u ter by Barr y Vercoe). The com poser

Char les Dodge wrote during th is t ime ab out th e inten t of thes emu sic programs for sound synthesis :

“It is through s imulating the operations of an ide al electronic m us ic

studio with an unlimited amount of equipment that a digital

compu ter sy nthesizes sound . The f irst computer sound sy nthesis

program tha t w as truly gene ral purpos e (i.e., one tha t could, in

theory, produce any sound) was created at the Bell Telephone

Laboratories in the late 195 0’s . A comp ose r us ing such a p rogram

m us t typ ically provide : (1) Stored fu nctions w hich w ill reside in the

compu ter’s mem ory represen ting w aveforms to be used by the uni t

genera tors of the program. (2) “Instruments” of his own designw hich logically interconne ct thes e uni t g enera to rs . (Unit gen-

e r a t o r s are su bprogram s th at s imu late all the s ound gen eration,

modification, and storage devices of the ideal electronic music

studio.) The computer “instruments” p lay the notes of the compo-

s ition. (3) Notes may correspond to the familiar “pitch in time” or,

alternatively , may represe nt som e conven ient w ay of dividing the

tim e continuu m .”

By the end of the 196 0’s compu ter soun d synth esis research

sa w a large nu mber of new programs in operation a t a variety of academ ic and p rivate inst i tut ions. The dem an ds of the m edium



48


however were still qu ite tedious an d, regardless of th e incr eas ed

sophist ication in control , remained a tape medium as i ts f inal

product. Some composers had taken the init ia l steps towards

using the computer for realt ime performance by l inking the

powerful control functions of the digital computer to the sound

generat ors a n d m odifiers of th e an alog syn th esizer. We will dealwith th e specifics of this developm ent in th e next s ection. From its

earl iest da ys the u se of the compu ter in mu sic can be divided into

two fairly distinct categories even though these categories have

been blurred in some composit ions: 1) those composers inter-

ested in using the computer predominantly as a composit ional

device to generate structural relat ionships that could not be

imagined oth erwise an d 2) the us e of the compu ter to generate

new synth etic waveforms an d t imbres.

A few of th e pioneering works of compu ter m u sic from 196 1

to 19 71 are th e following:

196 1) Tenn ey: Nois e S tudy

196 2) Tenn ey: Four Stochastic Studies

196 3) Tenn ey: PHASES

1964) Randall: QUARTETS IN PAIRS

1965) Randall: MUDGETT

1966) Randall: Ly ric Va riations

19 67 ) Hiller: Cosahedron

1968) Brün : INDEFRAUDIBLES; Risset: COMPUTER S UITE FROM

LITTLE B OY

196 9) Dodge: CHANGES ; Risset: Muta tions I

197 0) Dodge: EARTH’S MAGNETIC FIELD

1971) Chowning: SABELITHE

3 ) L I V E E L E C T R O N I C P E R F O R M A N C E

P R A C T I C E

A Definition : For the sake of convenience I will define live

electronic mu sic as th at in which electronic soun d generation,

processing and contr ol predominan tly occurs in realt ime du ring



49

D A V I D D U N N

a p erforman ce in front of an a u dience.

The idea th at th e concept of live perform an ce with electronic

soun ds s hould have a spec ia l s ta tus may seem ludic rous to many

readers. Obviously mus ic ha s always been a performan ce art and

the p rimary us age of e lectronic mu sical instru men ts b efore 1950

was almost always in a live performance situation. However, itmu st be remem bered th at th e defining of electronic mu sic as i ts

own genre really came into being with the tape studios of the

1950’s and that the beginnings of live electronic performance

practice in the 1960’s was in large part a reaction to both a

growin g dissa tisfaction with t he p erceived s terility of tap e mu sic

in performan ce (sou nd eman ating from loudsp eakers a nd li t t le

else) an d th e emergence of th e variou s ph ilosoph ical in fluen ces of

cha nce, ind etermina cy, improvisa tion a nd s ocial experimen tat ion.

The issu e of combining ta pe with tradit ional acous tic instru -

men ts was a m ajor one ever since Madern a, Varèse, Luen ing an d

Ussa chevsky first introduced s u ch works in the 1950’s. A varietyof composers continu ed to address this problem with increas ing

vigor into the 1960’s. For many it was merely a means for

expanding the t imbral resources of the orchestral instruments

they had been writing for, while for others it was a specific

composit ional concern tha t dealt with the expan sion of structu ral

aspects of performance in physical space. For instance MARIO

DAVIDOVSKY an d KENNETH GABURO h ave both written a s eries

of comp osit ions which a ddress the complex contrapu nta l dyna m-

ics between live performer s an d tap e: Davidovsky’s Synchronisms

1 -8 an d Gabu ro’s Antiphonies 1-11 . These works dema nd a widevariety of combinations of tape ch an nels, instru men ts an d voices

in live perform an ce cont exts. In th ese an d similar works by other

composers th e tape sou nd s ar e derived from all ma nn er of sour ces

an d techn iqu es includ ing compu ter synth esis. The repertory for

combinations of instru men ts an d tape grew to imm ense interna -

t ional proportions during the 1960’s and included works from

Au str alia, North Amer ica, Sout h Am erica, Western Eu rope, East ern

Europe, Japan, and the Middle East . An example of how one

composer viewed th e dynam ics of relat ionsh ip b etween tape a nd

performers is sta ted by Kenn eth Gabu ro:

“On a fundamental level ANTIPHONY III is a p hys i ca l interplay

between l ive performers and two speaker systems (tape). In

performance, 16 soloists are divided into 4 groups, with one

s oprano, alto, tenor, and bas s in e ach. The groups are s patially

separated from each other and from the speakers. Antiphonal

as pects develop betw een an d a mong the performers w ithin each

group, between and among groups, between the speakers, and

between and among the groups and s peakers .

On an other leve l Antiphony III is an a ud i to ry interplay betw eentape and live band s. The tape band ma y be divided into 3 broad



50


compositional classes: (1) quasi-duplication of live sounds, (2)

electro-m echan ical trans form s of thes e bey ond the capabilities of

live performers, and (3) movement into complementary acoustic

regions of sy nthes ized electronic s ound. Inciden tally , I term the

union of these class es e lec t ro n ics , as distinct from tape content

w hich is pure concrete-m ixing or electronic s ound s y nthes is . Thelive ban d encompa ss es a broad spectrum from norma l s inging to

vocal transmission having electronically associated characteris-

tics. Th e total tape -live interplay , therefore, is the resu lt of dis crete

mixtures of sound, all having the properties of the voice as a

com m on point of depa rture.”

Another important aesthetic shift that occurred within the

tape studio environment was the desire to compose onto tape

u sing realt ime processes th at did not require subs equent edit ing.

PAULINE OLIVEROS a n d Richa rd Ma xfield were ea rly pra ctitioner s

of inn ovative techn iques t h at allowed for live perform an ce in th estu dio. Oliveros comp osed I of IV (1966) in this man ner u sing tape

delay an d m ixer feedback s ystems. Oth er composers discovered

synth esizer patch es th at would al low for au tonomou s b ehaviors

to emerge from the complex interactions of voltage-control de-

vices. The output from these systems could be recorded as

versions on tape or amplified in live performance with some

perform er mod ification. Entropical Paradise (1969) by Douglas

Leedy is a clas sic examp le of su ch a compos ition for th e Buch la

Synthesizer.

The largest and most innovative category of live electronicmu sic to come to fruit ion in t he 19 60’s was the u se of synth esizers

and custom electronic circuitry to both generate sounds and

process o thers , su ch as voice and/ or ins t rum ents , in rea lt ime

performance. The most simplistic example of this application

extends ba ck to th e very first u se of electronic am plification by th e

early instru men ts of the 1930 ’s. Du ring the 1 950’s J OHN CAGE

an d DAVID TUDOR u sed m icroph ones a n d am plification as com-

posit ional devices to emp ha size the sm all soun ds a nd resona nces

of the p iano interior. In 1960 Cage extended th is idea to th e u se

of ph onograph car tridges an d contact microphon es in CARTRIDGE

MUSIC . The work focused upon the intentional amplification of small sounds revealed through an indeterminate process. Cage

described the au ral product: “The soun ds w hich resu lt are noise s ,

some complex, others extremely simple such as amplifier feed-

back, loud-speaker hum, etc. (All sounds, even those ordinarily

thought to be un des irable, are accepted in th is mu sic.)”

For Cage the aban donm ent of tape mu sic an d the m ove toward

live electronic performance was an essential outgrowth of his

philosophy of indeterminacy. Cage’s aesthetic position necessi-

tated the theatricality and unpredictability of live performance

since he d esired a circum stan ce where ind ividual value ju dge-



51

D A V I D D U N N

men ts would not intr u de up on th e revelation a nd perception of

new possibilities. Into the 1960’s his fascination for electronic

sou nd s in indeterminate circum sta nces continu ed to evolve and

become inclusive of an ethical argu men t for th e app ropriatenes s

of ar tists work ing with tech n ology as critics an d m irrors of th eir

cultural environment. Cage composed a large number of suchworks du ring the 196 0’s often en list ing th e ins pired a ss ista nce of

l ike-minded composer/ performers s u ch as David Tudor, Gordon

Mumma, David Behrman, and Lowell Cross. Among the most

famous of these works was the series of compositions entitled

VARIATIONS of which there numbered eight by the end of the

decad e. Thes e works were really highly complex and indeterm i-

nate happenings that often used a wide range of electronic

techn iques and s ound sou rces .

The comp oser/ perform er DAVID TUDOR was th e mu sician

m ost closely ass ociated with Cage du ring th e 196 0’s. As a brilliant

concert pian ist du ring the 195 0’s h e had ch am pioned th e worksof major avant-garde composers and then shifted his perform-

an ce activities to electronics d u ring th e 1960 ’s, per forming oth er

compos er’s live-electronic works an d h is own. His m ost famou s

composition, RAINFOREST , and i ts mult ifarious performances

since it was conceived in 1 968, a lmost cons ti tute a m u sical su b-

culture of e lectronic sound research. The work requires the

fabrication of special resonating objects and sculptural con-

s t ruc t s wh ic h se rve a s one -o f -a -k ind loudspe a ke r s whe n

tran sdu cers are at tached to them. The constru cted “loudsp eakers”

function to amplify and produce both addit ive and subtractivet ransformat ions of source sounds such as basic e lec t ronic

waveforms . In m ore recent performa nces th e soun ds h ave includ ed

a wide selection of prerecorded m aterials.

Wh ile live electronic mu sic in th e 196 0’s was pred omina n tly an

American genre, activity in Europe and Japan also began to

emerge. The foremost European composer to embrace live elec-

tronic techniques in performance was KARLHEINZ STOCK-

HAUSEN. By 196 4 h e was experimen ting with t he s taightforward

electronic filtering of an am plified t am -tam in MICROPHONIE I .

Su bsequ ent works for a variety of ins tru men tal ensemb les an d/

or voices, su ch a s Prozession or St immung, explored very ba sic bu tingenious use of amplification, filtering and ring modulation

techniques in realt ime performance. In a statement about the

experimentation th at led to these works St ockhau sen conveys a

clear sense of the spirit of exploration into sound itself that

pu rveyed m u ch of th e live electronic work of the 19 60’s:

“Last su mm er I ma de a few experimen ts by activating the tam -tam

w ith the m ost d ispa rate collection of ma terials I could find a bout the

house —glass, metal, wood, rubber, synthetic materials— at the



52


s am e time link ing u p a han d-held m icrophone (highly directional)

to an electric filter an d connecting the filter output to a n a m plifier

unit wh ose output w as aud ible through louds peak ers. Meanw hile

m y colleague J aap S pek altered th e s ettings of the filter and volum e

controls in an improvisa tory w ay . At the s am e time w e recorde d the

results on tape. This tape-recording of our first experiences in‘m icrophony’ w as a d is covery of the greates t importance for me. We

had com e to no sort of agreem ent: I us ed su ch of the m aterials I had

collected a s I thought bes t and listen ed -in to the tam -tam su rface

w ith the m icrophone just a s a d octor m ight lis ten-in to a b ody w ith

his stethoscope; Spek reacted equally spontaneously to w hat he

he ard a s the p rodu ct of our joint a ctivity.”

In m an y ways th e evolu tion of live electronic m u sic par allels

th e in creas ing techn ological soph istication of its p ractitioners . In

the early 1960’s most of the works within this genre were

concern ed with fairly simp le realtime process ing of inst ru men talsou nds an d voices. Like Stockha u sen’s work from this p eriod th is

ma y have been as bas ic as th e ma nipu lation of a live performer

through audio filters, tape loops or the performer’s interaction

with acou st ic feedb ack . ROBE RT ASHLEY’S Wolfman (19 64 ) is an

example of the use of high amplification of voice to achieve

feedback th at a lters th e voice and a p rerecorded ta pe.

By the end of the decade a n u mb er of composers h ad techn o-

logically progressed to des ignin g their own cu stom circuitry. For

exa m ple, GO RDON MUMMA’S MESA (1966 ) and HORNPIPE (1967)

are both examples of instru men tal pieces th at u se cus tom-bu ilte lectronics capable of semi-automatic response to the sounds

generated by the performer or resonances of the performance

space. One composer whose work i l lustrates a continuity of

gradu ally in creas ing tech n ical s oph istication is DAVID BEHRMAN.

From fairly rudimentary uses of electronic effects in the early

1960’s his work progressed through various stages of live elec-

tron ic complexification to com positions like RUNTHROUGH (1968),

where cus tom-bu ilt c ircu itry an d a ph oto electric soun d distr ibu-

tion ma trix is a ctivated b y perform ers with flas h lights .

This trend toward new performance si tuations in which the

techn ology fu n ction ed as st ru ctu rally intrins ic to the compositioncontinu ed to gain favor. Man y comp osers b egan to experiment

with a vast arra y of e lectronic contr ol devices an d u nique s oun d

sou rces which often requ ired au dio engineers a nd technician s to

function as performing musicians, and musicians to be techni-

cally competent. Since the number of such works proliferated

rap idly, a few examp les of th e ran ge of activities d u ring th e 196 0’s

mu st su ffice. In 1 965 , ALVIN LUCIER pr esen ted h is Mus ic for Solo

Perform er 196 5 which u sed am plified bra inwave signa ls to ar t icu -

late the sympathetic resonances of an orchestra of percussion

instruments. John Mizelle’s Photo Os cillations (1969 ) u sed m ul-



53

D A V I D D U N N

t iple las ers a s l ight sou rces th rough which the p erformers walked

in order to trigger a variety of photo-cell activated circuits.

Pend ulum Music (196 8) by Steve Reich s imply u sed m icroph ones

su spen ded over loud speak ers from long cables. The m icrophones

were set in motion an d allowed to genera te pat tern s of feedback

as th ey pas sed over the louds peakers. For these works, and m an yothers l ike them , the st ru ctura l dictates which emerged out of the

na tu re of the chosen technology also defined a part icular compo-

sit ion as a u nique environm ental an d th eatrical experience.

Co-synchronous with the technical and aesthetic advances

th at were occu rring in live perform an ce tha t I h ave ju st ou tlin ed,

th e u se of digital comp u ters in live perform an ce began t o slowly

emerge in the la te 1 960’s. The m ost compr ehens ive ach ievement

at marrying digital control sophistication to the realtime sound

generat ion cap ab ilities of th e ana log syn th esizer was pr obab ly th e

S AL-MAR CONSTR UCTION (1969) of SALVATORE MARTIRANO.

This hybrid system evolved over several years with the help of many colleagues and students at the University of Illinois. Con-

sidered by Martiran o to be a composit ion u nto i tself, the m achine

consisted of a motley assortment of custom-buil t analog and

digital circuitry contr olled from a completely u niqu e interface an d

distributed through multiple channels of loudspeakers sus-

pended th roughou t the performan ce space. Martiran o describes

h is work a s follows:

“The S AL-MAR CONSTRUCTION w as de s igne d, finan ced a nd built

in 1969-1972 by engineers Divilbiss, Franco, Borovec and composer Martirano here at the University of Illinois. It is a hybrid

system in which TTL logical circuits (small and medium scale

integration) drive an alog modu les, s uch as voltage-controlled os cil-

lators , am plifiers a nd filters. The SMC w eighs 150 0lbs crated a nd

m eas ures 8’x5’x3'.

It can be set-up at one end of the space with a ‘spider web’ of

speaker wire going out to 24 plexiglass enclosed speakers that

hang in a va riety of patterns about the space. The spea kers w eigh

ab out 6lbs . each, an d a re gently m obile according to air currents in

the s pace. A changing pattern of sound -traffic by 4 indepe nd entlycontrolled program s p rodu ces rich timbres tha t occur as th e m oving

s ource of sound caus es the s ound to literally bum p into itself in the

air, thus effecting ph as e can cellation an d ad dition of the signal.

The control panel has 291 touch-sen sit ive s et / reset sw itches that

are patched so tha t a tree of diverse signal paths is ava ilable to the

performer. The output of the s w itch is e ither se t ‘out1’ or res et ‘out2’.

Further the 291 switches are multiplexed down 4 levels. The

unique characteristic of the switch is that it can be driven both

m anu ally an d logically , wh ich allow s hu m an/ m achine interaction.



54


Most innovative feature of the hum an/ m achine interface is th at it

allow s th e us er to s w itch from control of macro to micro param eters

of the information outpu t. This is ana logous to a z oom lens on a

came ra. A pianist rema ins at one level only , that is , on the k ey s . It

is poss ible to ass ign pe rform er actions to AUTO and allow the S MC

to mak e a ll decisions.”

One of the major difficulties with the hybrid performance

systems of the la te 1960’s an d early 1970’s was t he s heer s ize of

digita l compu ters. One s olu tion to this problem was present ed by

GORDON MUMMA in h is com pos ition Conspiracy 8 (19 70 ). When

the piece was presented at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, a

remote data -link was es tablish ed to a compu ter in Boston which

received information a bout the performan ce in progress. In tu rn

th is computer th en i ssu ed ins t ruc t ions to th e performers an d

generated sounds which were also transmitted to the perform-

an ce site throu gh data-l ink.Sta r t ing in 1970 an ambi t ious a t tempt a t us ing the n ew mini -

computers was init ia ted by Ed Kobrin, a former student and

colleagu e of Mart iran o’s. S ta rtin g in Illinois in collab ora tion with

engineer Jeff Mack, and continuing at the Center for Music

Experiment at the University of California, San Diego, Kobrin

designed an extremely sophist icated hybrid system (actually

referred to as HYBRID I THROUGH V) that interfaced a mini-

computer to an array of voltage-controlled electronic sound

modules. As a live performance electronic instrument, its six-

voice polyph ony, complexity an d s peed of intera ction m ade it th emos t powerful realtime system of its time. On e of its versions is

descr ibed by Kobrin:

“The m ost recent s y stem cons ists of a PDP 11 compu ter w ith 16 k

w ords of core m em ory , du al digital cas se tte un it, CRT terminal w ith

ASCII keyboard, and a piano-type keyboard. A digital interface

cons is ting of interrupt m odules, a dd ress decoding circuitry , 8 and

10 bit digital to analog conve rters w ith h olding regis ters, program -

mable counters and a series of tracking and status registers is

hardw ired to a sy nthes izer. The m us ic generated is distributed to

16 s peak ers creating a controlled soun d e nvironmen t.”

Perhaps the most radical and innovative aspect of live elec-

tronic performan ce practice to emerge during this t ime was the

ap pear an ce of a n ew form of collective mu sic ma king. In E u rope,

North America and J apa n s everal imp ortant groups of mu sician s

began to collab orate in collective com positiona l, imp rovisa tional,

and theatrical activities that relied heavily upon the new elec-

tron ic techn ologies. Som e of th e reas ons for this tren d were: 1) th e

performance demands of the technology itself which often re-

quired multiple performers to accomplish basic tasks; 2) the



55

D A V I D D U N N

improvisatory and open-end ed na tu re of some of the m u sic was

friend ly an d/ or ph ilosophically biased towards a diverse an d

flexible nu mb er of pa rticipa nt s; an d 3) th e cultu ral an d political

climate was particularly attuned to encouraging social experi-

menta t ion .

As ear ly as 1960 , the ONCE Group h ad formed in Ann Arbor,Michigan. Comp rised of a diverse group of arch itects, com posers ,

dancers, f i lmmakers, sculptors and theater people, the ONCE

GROUP presented the annual ONCE FESTIVAL. The principal

composers of this group consisted of George Cacioppo, Roger

Reynolds, Donald Scavarda, Robert Ash ley and Gordon Mum ma ,

m ost of whom were actively exploring tap e mu sic an d d eveloping

live electronic techniques. In 1966 Ashley and Mumma joined

forces with Da vid Beh rm an an d Alvin Lu cier to crea te one of the

mos t influ ential live electronic performa nce en sem bles, the SONIC

ARTS UNION . While its m emb ers wou ld collaborate in t he r ealiza-

t ion of composit ions by its mem bers, a nd by other composers, i twas n ot concern ed with collaborat ive composition or imp rovisa -

t ion l ike man y other group s th at h ad formed abou t the sa me t ime.

Concu rren t with t he ONCE Group activities were the concerts

and events presented by the part ic ipants of the San Francisco

Tape Mus ic Cent er su ch a s Pa u line Oliveros, Terry Riley, Ram on

Sender and Morton Subotnick. Likewise a powerful center for

collaborative activity had developed at the University of Illinois,

Cham paign/ Urbana where Herber t Brün , Kenneth Gaburo , Le-

jaren Hiller , Salvatore Martiran o, and J am es Tenn ey had been

working. By th e late 1 960 ’s a similarly vital aca dem ic scene h adformed at th e University of Californ ia, San Diego wher e Gabu ro,

Oliveros, Reyn olds a nd Robert Erickson were now teach ing.

In Eu rope s everal inn ovative collectives ha d a lso formed . To

perform h is own mu sic Stockha u sen h ad gath ered together a l ive

electronic music ensemble consisting of Alfred Alings, Harald

Boje, Peter Eötvös, Johannes Fritsch, Rolf Gehlhaar, and Aloys

Konta rs ky. In 19 64 an intern ationa l collective called th e Grup po

di Improvisazione Nuova Consonanza was created in Rome for

perform ing live electron ic mu sic. Two years later, Rome a lso sa w

th e forma tion of Mus ica Elettron ica Viva, on e of th e mos t ra dical

electronic performa nce collectives to ad vance grou p imp rovisa -tion that often involved audience participation. In its original

incarna tion the group included Allan Bryant, Alvin Curr an , J ohn

Phetteplace, Frederic Rzewski, and Richard Teitelbaum.

The oth er ma jor collaborat ive grou p concern ed with th e im pli-

cations of electronic techn ology was AMM in En glan d. Fou n ded in

196 5 by jazz mu sician s Keith Rowe, Lou Ga re an d Ed die Provost ,

and the experimental genius Cornelius Cardew, the group fo-

cused its energy into highly eclectic but disciplined improvisa-

t ions with electro-acoustic ma terials. In ma ny ways th e grou p was

an inten tional social experimen t th e experience of which deeply



56


informed th e su bsequ ent S cratch Orches tra collective of Cardew’s.

One final category of live electronic performance practice

involves t he m ore focus ed a ctivities of the Minim alist compos ers

of th e 19 60’s. Thes e compos ers an d th eir activities were involved

with both individua l and collective perform an ce activities a n d in

large par t confu sed t he b oun daries between th e so-called “seri-ous ” avan t-garde an d popu lar m u sic. The comp oser TERRY RILEY

exemplifies this idea quite dramatically. During the late 1960’s

Riley created a very popu lar form of solo performa n ce us ing wind

instru men ts, keyboards a nd voice with tape delay systems th at

was an outgrowth from h is early experiments into pattern mu sic

an d h is growing interest in Ind ian mu sic . In 1964 the New York

composer LaMonte Young formed THE THEATRE OF ETERNAL

MUSIC to realize his extended investigations into pure vertical

ha rmon ic relat ions hips an d tu nings. The ens emble consisted of

str ing instruments, singing voices and precisely tuned drones

genera ted by audio osc i l la tors . In ear ly performances theperformers included John Cale, Tony Conrad, LaMonte Young,

an d Marian Zazeela .

A very brief list of sign ifican t live electron ic mu sic work s of th e

19 60 ’s is th e following:

196 0) Cage: CARTRIDGE MUSIC

196 4) Youn g: The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys ; Sender:

Desert Am bulance ; As h ley:Wolfman ; S tockhau sen: Mikrophonie I

196 5) Lu cier: Mus ic for S olo Performe r

1966) Mum ma: MESA

1967) Stockhau sen: PROZESSION ; Mumma: HORNPIPE

1968) Tudor: RAINFOREST ; Behrman: RUNTHROUGH

1969) Cage and Hiller: HPSCHD; Martirano: Sa l-Mar Cons truc-

tion ; Mizelle: Photo Os cillations

1970 ) Rosenboom: Ecology of the S k in

4 ) M U L T I - M E D I A

The historical an tecedan ts for m ixed-media conn ect mu lt iple

thr eads of art ist ic tradit ions a s diverse as theatr e , c inem a, m us ic,



57

D A V I D D U N N

scu lptu re, literatu re, an d da nce. Since the extreme eclectic ism of

th is topic and th e sh eer volu m e of activity as sociated with it is too

vast for th e focus of th is ess ay, I will only be concern ed with a few

examples of mixed-media activities during the 1960’s that im-

pacted th e electronic art an d mu sic tradit ions from which su bse-

quent video experimentation emerged.Much of th e previous ly discu ss ed live electron ic mu sic of th e

1960 ’s ca n be placed within the m ixed-media category in tha t th e

performance circumstances demanded by the technology were

intentiona lly theatrical or en vironm enta l. This em ph asis on how

technology could h elp to art iculate new s patial re lat ionsh ips an d

heighten ed intera ction between th e physical senses was sh ared

with many other art ists from the visual , theatrical and dance

tradit ions. Many new terms arose to describe the result ing

experiments of various individu als an d grou ps s u ch as “ha ppen-

ings,” “events ,” “act ion th eat re,” “en viron m en ts ” , or what Rich ar d

Kostelanetz called “The Theatre of Mixed-Means.” In many waysth e aesth etic cha llenge an d collaborat ive agenda of th ese projects

was conceptually linked to th e various count er-cu ltu ral move-

ments and social experiments of the decade. For some art ists

th ese activities were a direct con tinu ity from p art icipation in th e

avant-garde movemen ts of the 1950’s s u ch a s Fluxu s, e lectronic

music, “kinetic sculpture,” Abstact Expressionism and Pop Art,

an d for others th ey were a fu lfillment of ideas abou t th e merger of

art an d science init ia ted by the 1930’s Bau ha u s art ists .

Many of the performance groups already mentioned were

engaged in m ixed-med ia as th eir pr incipal activity. In Michigan,th e ONCE Group ha d been preceded by the Man ifes tations : Light

and Sound performa nces a n d Space Theatre of Milton Cohen as

early as 1 956. The filmm aker J ordan Belson a nd Hen ry Ja cobs

organized th e Vortex perform an ces in San Fran cisco th e following

year. Japan saw the formation of Tokyo’s Group Ongaku a n d

Sogetsu Art Center with Kuniharu Akiyama, Toshi Ichiyanagi,

Joji Yuasa, Takahisa Kosugi, and Chieko Shiomi in the early

1960’s. At the same time were the ritual oriented activities of

LaMon te You n g’s THE THEA TRE OF ETERNAL MUSIC . Th e group

Pulsa was part iculalry active through the la te sixties staging

environmen tal light and s oun d works s uch as th e BOS TON PUBLIC GARDENS DEMONSTRATION (1968) that used 55 xenon strobe

lights p laced u nd erwater in the garden ’s fou r-acre pond. On top

of the water were placed 5 2 p olyplan ar louds peakers which were

controlled, along with the lights, by computer and prerecorded

ma gnetic tape. This resu lted in strea ms of l ight an d sou nd being

projected th roughou t th e park a t high speeds. At th e heart of this

event was the unique HYBR ID DIGITAL/ ANALOG AUDIO SY N-

THESIZER which Pulsa designed and used in most of their

subsequent performance events.

In 196 2, th e USCO form ed as a ra dical collective of art ists a nd



58


engineers d edicated to collective action an d a non ymity. Some of

the ar t ists involved were Gerd Stern, Stan Van Der Beek, and J u d

Yalku t. As Dou glas Davis des cribes th em:

“USCO’s lead ers w ere strongly influenced b y McLuhan’s ideas as

expressed in his book Und ers ta nd ing Med ia . Their environ-ments—performed in galleries, churches, schools, and museums

across the United States—increased in complexity with time,

culminating in m ultis creen au diovisua l “w orlds ” an d s trobe en vi-

ronments. They saw technology as a means of bringing people

together in a new and sophisticated tribalis m . In pu rsuit of that

idea l, they lived , w orke d, an d created together in virtual anony m -

ity.”

The influ ence of McLuh an also had a strong impact u pon J ohn

Cage du ring this period an d ma rks a sh ift in his work toward a

more politically and socially engaged discourse. This shift wasexemplified in two of his major works during the 1960’s which

were large mu lti-med ia extra vagan za’s s taged du ring residencies

at the University of Illinois in 1967 and 1969: Musicircus a n d

HPSCHD. The later work was conceived in collaboration with

Lejaren Hiller and subsequently used 51 computer-generated

soun d tapes , in a ddit ion to seven ha rpsichords an d nu merous

film projections by Ronald Nam eth.

Another example of a major mixed-media work composed

du ring the 1960’s is the TEATRO PROBABILISTICO III (19 68 ) for

actors, m u sician s, d an cers, l ight , TV camera s, pu blic an d tr afficconductor by the brazilian composer JOCY DE OLIVEIRA. She

descr ibes h er work in th e followin g terms th at a re indicative of a

typical a t t itu de toward m ixed-media performan ce at th at t ime:

“This p iece is an exe rcis e in s earching for total perception lea ding

to a global event which tends to eliminate the set role of public

versus performers through a complementary interaction. The

com m unity life and the urban s pace are us ed for this purpose. It

also includ es the TV comm unication on a permuta tion of live a nd

video tape a nd a trans m uta tion from utilitarian -cam era to creative

camera.

The performer is equally an actor, musician, dancer, light, TV

came ra/ video artis t or public. They all are d irected by a traffic

condu ctor. He repres ents the com plex contradiction of explicit an d

implicit. He is a k ind of military God w ho controls the freed om of the

powers by dictating orders through signs. He has power over

everyth ing an d y et he cannot predict everything. The p erformers

improvise on a time-event structure, according to general direc-

tions. The number of performers is determined by the space

poss ibilities . It is preferable to use a d ow ntow n pe des trian area.



59

D A V I D D U N N

The cond uctor s hould be located in the cente r of the pe rforming area

visible to the p erform ers (over a platform ). He s hould w ear a

uniform repres enting any high rank .

For the public as well as the performers this is an exercise in

s earching for a total exp erien ce in complete pe rception.”

One of the most imp ortant intel lectual concerns to emerge at

this t ime am ongst most of thes e art ists was an explicit embra cing

of techn ology as a creative coun ter-cu ltur al force. In a ddition to

McLuhan, the figure of Buckminster Fuller had a profound

influen ce upon an entire generat ion of art ists. Fu ller’s as sert ion

tha t th e radical an d often n egative chan ges wrought by techn o-

logical inn ovation were also opportu nities for proper un ders tan d-

ing and r edirection of resou rces becam e an organ izing principle

for van guard thinkers in the a rts. The need to tak e technology

seriously as the social environment in which art ists l ived andformu lated crit ical re lat ions hips with the culture at large became

forma lized in projects su ch as Experim ents in Art and Technology ,

Inc. and the various fest ivals and events they sponsored: Nine

Evenings: Theater and Enginee ring; Some More Beginnings ; the

series of perform an ces presen ted at Automation Hous e in New York

City dur ing th e la te 196 0’s; an d th e PEPSI-COLA PAVILION FOR

EXPO 70 in Osaka, Japan. One of the part ic ipants in Expo 70,

Gordon Mu mm a, describes th e imm ense complexity and s ophis-

t ication tha t m ixed-media pres entat ions ha d evolved into by tha t

time:

“The m ost rem ark able of all m ulti-m ed ia collaborations w as proba-

bly the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion for Expo 70 in Osaka. This project

includ ed m any idea s distilled from p revious mu lti-m edia a ctivities ,

and significantly a dva nced both the art and technology by num er-

ous innovations . The Expo 70 pav ilion w as remarka ble for se veral

reasons . It w as an international collaboration of dozen s of artis ts,

as many engineers, and numerous industries, all coordinated by

Experiments in Art and Technology, Inc. From several hundred

proposals, the p rojects of tw enty -eight artists and m us icians w ere

s elected for pres en tation in the pa vilion. The outs ide of the pa vilionw as a 12 0-foot-diam eter geodes ic dome of wh ite plas tic and s teel,

enshrouded by an ever-changing, artificially generated water-

vapor cloud. The public plaza in front of the pavilion contained

seve n m an-sized , sound -emitting f loats, that moved slow ly and

chan ged d irection w he n touche d. A thirty -foot polar heliosta t

sculpture tracked the sun and reflected a ten-foot-diameter sun-

bea m from its elliptical m irror through the cloud onto the pav ilion.

The inside of the p avilion cons is ted of tw o large spa ces, one black-

w alled a nd clam -s hape d, the other a ninety -foot high he m isp heri-

cal mirror dome. The s ound and light environme nt of thes e s paces



60


w as achieved by an innovative au dio and optical sy stem cons ist ing

of state-of-the-art analog audio circuitry, with krypton-laser,

tungston, quartz-iodide, and xenon lighting, all controlled by a

specially designed digital computer programming facility.

The s ound, light, and control sy stem s, a nd their integration w iththe u nique hem isp herical acoustics and optics of the p avilion, w ere

controlled from a m ovab le cons ole. On this cons ole the lighting an d

s ound h ad s eparate pan els from w hich the intens ities , colors , and

directions of the lighting, pitches , loud ne s s , tim bre, and directions

of the sound could be controlled by live performers. The sound-

m oving capabilities of the dom e w ere achieved w ith a rhom bic grid

of thirty-seven loudspeakers surrounding the dome, and were

des igned to allow the m oveme nt of sound s from point, straight line,

curved , and field ty pes of sources. The spee d of movem ent could

vary from e xtremely s low to fast en ough to lose the s ens e of motion.

The soun ds to be hea rd could be from an y live, taped , or sy nthe-s ize d s ource, and up to thirty-two d ifferent inputs could be con-

trolled at one tim e. Furthermore, it w as pos s ible to electronically

modify these inputs by using eight channels of modification cir-

cuitry that could cha nge the p itch, loudne s s, an d timbre in a v as t

num ber of comb inations . Another console pane l contained digital

circuitry that could be programmed to automatically control as-

pects of the light and sound. By their programming of this control

pan el, the pe rforme rs could de legate an y am ount of the light and

s ound functions to the d igital circuitry . Thus , at one extreme the

pavilion could be en tirely a live-perform an ce ins trume nt, an d a t theother, an automated environment. The most important design

concept of the pavilion w as that it w as a live-perform ance, m ulti-

med ia instrum ent. Between the extreme s of manu al and automatic

control of so m any as pects of environme nt, the artist could e sta b-

lish all sorts of sophisticated m an-ma chine performan ce interac-

tions.”

C O N S O L I D A T I O N : T H E 1 9 7 0 A N D 8 0 ’ S

The begin nin g of th e 1970 ’s s aw a cont inu ation of mos t of th edevelopments initiated in the 1960’s. Activities were extremely

diverse a nd included a ll th e var ieties of electronic mu sic genr es

previously established throughout the 20th century. Academic

tape studios continued to thrive with a great deal of unique

cus tom-bu ilt h ardware being conceived by en gineers, comp osers

an d stu dents . Hun dreds of private stu dios were also establish ed

as th e price of techn ology becam e m ore afforda ble for individu al

art ists. Man y more novel str ategies for integrat ing tape an d live

perform ers were a dvan ced as were new concepts for live electron-

ics a n d m u lti-med ia. A great ru sh of activity in n ew circu it design



61

D A V I D D U N N

also took p lace and the now fam iliar patt ern of continu al mini-

aturization with increased power and memory expansion for

computers began to become evident. Along with this increased

level of electronic music activity two significant developments

becam e evident: 1) wha t ha d been for decades a pioneering fringe

activity within the larger context of music as a cultural activitynow begins to become dominant; and 2) the commercial and

soph ist icated ind u stria l man u factu ring of e lectronic mu sic sys-

tems and materials that had been fairly esoteric emerges in

response to this awareness. The result of these new factors

signa ls t he en d of the pioneering era of e lectronic mu sic and the

beginning of a post-modern aesthetic that is predominantly

driven b y comm ercial ma rket forces.

By the end of the 1 970’s most inn ovations in ha rdware design

had been taken over by industry in response to the emerging

needs of popu lar culture . The film an d m u sic “indu stries” became

the m ajor forces in esta blish ing techn ical stand ards which im-pacted su bsequ ent electronic mu sic hardware design. While the

industria l representationist agenda succeeded in the guise of

popu lar cultu re, some pioneering creative work con tinu ed with in

the divergent contexts of academic tape studios and computer

music research centers and in the non-insti tut ional aesthetic

resea rch of individua l comp osers . While sp ecialized venu es s till

exist where experimental work can be heard, i t has been an

increasing tenden cy tha t access to such work h as gotten progres-

sively more p roblemat ic.

One of the m ost important sh ifts to occu r in the 19 80’s was theprogress ive move towar d th e aba nd onm ent of an alog electronics

in favor of digital system s wh ich could poten tially recapitu alate

an d su mm arize the prior history of e lectronic mu sic in s tan dard -

ized forms . By th e mid-198 0’s th e ind u st rial ons lau ght of h ighly

redundant MIDI interfaceable digital synthesizers, processors,

an d sa mp lers even began to displace the comm ercial merchan -

dizing of tradit ional acoustic orchestr al and ban d instru men ts.

By 1990 the presence of these commercial technologies had

become a u biqu itous cultura l presence that largely defined th e

na tu re of the m u sic being produced.

C O N C L U S I O N

Wha t began in this centu ry as a u topian an d vaguely Roma ntic

pas sion, na mely that technology offered an opportun ity to expand

hu ma n perception an d provide n ew avenu es for th e discovery of

reality, su bs equen tly evolved th rou gh th e 1960 ’s into an intoxi-

cation with this humanist ic agenda as a social cri t ique and

count er-cu ltural movemen t. The irony is tha t m an y of the art ist’s

who were most concerned with technology as a coun ter-cultural




social critiqu e bu ilt tools th at u ltima tely becam e the res our ces for

an indu stria l movement tha t in large part eradicated th eir ideo-

logical concerns . Most of thes e artist s a n d th eir work h ave fallen

in to the annonymous c racks of a consumer cu l ture tha t now

regards their experimen tation m erely as inh erited techn ical R &

D. While th e ma ss distr ibu tion of the electronic mean s of mu sicalprodu ction app ears to be an egalitarian s u ccess , as a worst case

scenario it may also signify the suffocation of the modernist

dream at the hands of industria l profi teering. To quote the

ph ilosopher J acques Attal i: “Wh at is called m us ic today is all too

often only a d isgu ise for the m onologue of pow er. How ever, and this

is the s uprem e irony of it all, never before ha ve m us icians tried so

hard to communicate with their audience, and never before has

that communication been so deceiving. Music now seems hardly

m ore tha n a s omew hat clums y excus e for the s elf-glorification of

m us icians and the grow th of a new ind us trial sector.”

From a slightly more optimistic perspective, the current dis-solving of emp h as is up on h eroic ind ividua l ar tistic contribu tion s,

with in th e con text of th e curr ent p roliferat ion of mu sical technol-

ogy, ma y sign ify the emergen ce of a new s ocio-political str u ctu re:

the means to c rea te t ranscends the c rea ted objec ts and the

pers ona lity of th e object’s crea tor. The m as s d issem inat ion of new

tools an d inst ru m ents either signifies th e comp lete failure of th e

modernist agenda or it signifies the culminating expression of

commoditization through mass pro-

duction of the tools necessary to de-

construct the redundant loop of con-sumption. After decades of sel l ing

records as a replacement for the expe-

rience of creative action, the music

indu stry now sells th e tools which m ay

facilitate that creative participation.

We shift emphasis to the means of

produ ction ins tead of the produ ction

of consu mer deman d.

Whichever way the evolution of

electronic music unfolds will depend

upon the dynamical propert ies of adialectical synthesis between indus-

trial forces an d th e su rvival of th e modern ist belief in th e necess ity

for technology as a humanist ic potential . Whether the current

users of these tools can resist the redundancy of industria l

determined d esign biases, indu ced by th e clichés of commercial

ma rket forces, depen ds u pon th e continu ation of a b elief in the

neces sity for altern ative voices willin g to articulate t ha t wh ich th e

sta tu s qu o is u nwillingly to hear.

David Dunn, 1970s

dunn, david_a history of electronic music pioneers

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