A History of Electronic Music Pioneers

David Dunn

Note: This essay was written for the catalog that accompanied theexhibition: Eigenwelt der Apparatewelt: Pioneers of Electronic Art. Theexhibition was presented as part of Ars Electronica 1992, in Linz, Austriaand was curated by Woody and Steina Vasulka. It consisted of acomprehensive, interactive display of vintage electronic tools for video andaudio generation/processing from the 1960's and 1970's. The exhibition alsopresented several interactive laser disk displays of text, music samples,and still or moving images that were correlated to the exhibition catalog.

"When intellectual formulations are treated simply byrelegating them to the past and permitting the simplepassage of time to substitute for development, the suspicionis justified that such formulations have not really beenmastered, but rather they are being suppressed."

Theodor W. Adorno

"It is the historical necessity, if there is a historicalnecessity in history, that a new decade of electronictelevision should follow to the past decade of electronicmusic."

Nam June Paik (1965)Introduction:

Historical facts reinforce the obvious realization thatthe major cultural impetus which spawned video imageexperimentation was the American Sixties. As a response tothat cultural climate, it was more a perceptual movementthan an artistic one in the sense that its practitionersdesired an electronic equivalent to the sensory andphysiological tremendum which came to life during theVietnam War. Principal among these was the psychedelicexperience with its radical experiential assault on thenature of perception and visual phenomena. Armed with a newvisual ontology, whatever art image-making traditioninformed them it was less a cinematic one than an overtcounter-cultural reaction to television as a mainstreaminstitution and purveyor of images that were deemedpolitically false. The violence of technology thattelevision personified, both metaphorically and literallythrough the war images it disseminated, represented a sourcefor renewal in the electronic reconstruction of archaicperception.

It is specifically a concern for the expansion of humanperception through a technological stratagem that linksthose tumultuous years of aesthetic and technical

experimentation with the 20th century history of modernistexploration of electronic potentials, primarily exemplifiedby the lineage of artistic research initiated by electronicsound and music experimentation beginning as far back as1906 with the invention of the Telharmonium. This essaytraces some of that early history and its implications forour current historical predicament. The other essentialargument put forth here is that a more recent period ofvideo experimentation, is only one of the later chapters ina history of failed utopianism that dominates the artisticexploration and use of technology throughout the 20thcentury.

The following pages present an historical context forthe specific focus of this exhibition on early pioneers ofelectronic art. Prior to the 1960's, the focus is, ofnecessity, predominantly upon electronic sound tool-makingand electroacoustic aesthetics as antecedent to the morerelevant discussion of the emergence of electronic imagegeneration/processing tools and aesthetics. Our intention isto frame this image-making tradition within the realizationthat many of its concerns were first articulated within anaudio technology domain and that they repeat, within thehigher frequency spectrum of visual information, similarissues encountered within the electronic music/sound arttraditions. In fact, it can be argued that many of theinnovators within this period of electronic image-makingevolved directly from participation in the electronic musicexperimentation of that time period.

Since the exhibition itself attempts to depict theseindividuals and their art through the perspective of theactual means of production, as exemplified by the generativetools, it must be pointed out that the physical objects ondisplay are not to be regarded as aesthetic objects per sebut rather as instruments which facilitate the articulationof both aesthetic products and ideological viewpoints. It ispredominantly the process which is on exhibit. In thisregard we have attempted to present the ideas and art workthat emerged from these processes as intrinsic parts ofideological systems which must also be framed within anhistorical context. We have therefore provided access to thevideo/audio art and other cultural artifacts directly fromthis text as it unfolds in chronological sequence. Likewise,this essay discusses this history with an emphasis on issueswhich reinforce a systemic process view of a complex set ofdialectics (e.g. modernist versus representationistaesthetics, and artistic versus industrial/technocraticideologies).

Early Pioneers:

One of the persistent realities of history is that thefacts which we inherit as descriptions of historical eventsare not neutral. They are invested with the biases ofindividual and/or group participants, those who havesurvived or, more significantly, those who have acquiredsufficient power to control how that history is written. Inattempting to compile this chronology, it has been myintention to present a story whose major signposts includethose who have made substantive contributions but remainuncelebrated in addition to those figures who have merelybecome famous for being famous. The reader should bear inmind that this is a brief chronology that must of necessityneglect other events and individuals whose work was just asvalid. It is also an important feature of this history thatthe artistic use of technology has too often been criticizedas an indication of a de-humanizing trend by a culture whichactually embraces such technology in most other facets ofits deepest fabric. It appears to abhor that which mirrorsits fundamental workings and yet offers an alternative toits own violence. In view of this suspicion I have chosen towrite this chronology from a position that regards theartistic acquisition of technology as one of the few arenaswhere a creative critique of the so-called technological erahas been possible.

One of the earliest documented musical instrumentsbased upon electronic principles was the Clavecin Électriquedesigned by the jesuit priest Jean-Baptiste Delaborde inFrance, 1759. The device used a keyboard control based uponsimple electrostatic principles.

The spirit of invention which immediately preceded theturn of this century was synchronous with a culturalenthusiasm about the new technologies that wasunprecedented. Individuals such as Bell, Edison, and Teslabecame culture heroes who ushered in an ideology ofindustrial progress founded upon the power of harnessedelectricity. Amongst this assemblage of inventorindustrialists was Dr. Thaddeus Cahill, inventor of theelectric typewriter, designer and builder of the firstmusical synthesizer and, by default, originator ofindustrial muzak. While a few attempts to build electronicmusical instruments were made in the late 19th century byElisha Gray, Ernst Lorenz, and William Duddell, they werefairly tentative or simply the curious byproducts of otherresearch into electrical phenomena. One exception was themusical instrument called the Choralcelo built in the UnitedStates by Melvin L. Severy and George B. Sinclair between

1888 and 1908. Cahill's invention, the Telharmonium,however, remains the most ambitious attempt to construct aviable electronic musical instrument ever conceived.

Working against incredible technical difficulties,Cahill succeeded in 1900 to construct the first prototype ofthe Telharmonium and by 1906, a fairly complete realizationof his vision. This electro-mechanical device consisted of145 rheotome/alternators capable of producing five octavesof variable harmonic content in imitation of orchestral tonecolors. Its principal of operation consisted of what we nowrefer to as additive synthesis and was controlled from twotouch-sensitive keyboards capable of timbral, amplitude andother articulatory selections. Since Cahill's machine wasinvented before electronic amplification was available hehad to build alternators that produced more than 10,000watts. As a result the instrument was quite immense,weighing approximately 200 tons. When it was shipped fromHolyoke, Massachusetts to New York City, over thirtyrailroad flatcars were enlisted in the effort.

While Cahill's initial intention was simply to realizea truly sophisticated electronic instrument that couldperform traditional repertoire, he quickly pursued itsindustrial application in a plan to provide direct music tohomes and offices as the strategy to fund its construction.He founded the New York Electric Music Company with thisintent and began to supply realtime performances of popularclassics to subscribers over telephone lines. Ultimately thebusiness failed due to insurmountable technical and legaldifficulties, ceasing operations in 1911.

The Telharmonium and its inventor represent one of themost spectacular examples of one side of a recurrentdialectic which we will see demonstrated repeatedlythroughout the 20th century history of the artistic use ofelectronic technology. Cahill personifies the industrialideology of invention which seeks to imitate moreefficiently the status quo. Such an ideology desires tosummarize existent knowledge through a new technology andthereby provide a marketable representation of currentreality. In contrast to this view, the modernist ideologyevolved to assert an anti-representationist use oftechnology which sought to expand human perception throughthe acquisition of new technical means. It desired to seekthe unknown as new phenomenological and experientialunderstandings which shattered models of the so-called"real".

The modernist agenda is brilliantly summarized by thefollowing quote by Hugo Ball:

"It is true that for us art is not an end in itself, we havelost too many of our illusions for that. Art is for us anoccasion for social criticism, and for real understanding ofthe age we live in...Dada was not a school of artists, butan alarm signal against declining values, routine andspeculations, a desperate appeal, on behalf of all forms ofart, for a creative basis on which to build a new anduniversal consciousness of art."

Many composers at the beginning of this century dreamedof new electronic technologies that could expand the paletteof sound and tunings of which music and musical instrumentsthen consisted. Their interest was not to use the emergingelectronic potential to imitate existent forms, but ratherto go beyond what was already known. In the same year thatCahill finalized the Telharmonium and moved it to New YorkCity, the composer Ferruccio Busoni wrote his Entwurf einerneuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst (Sketch of a New Aesthetic ofMusic) wherein he proposed the necessity for an expansion ofthe chromatic scale and new (possibly electrical)instruments to realize it. Many composers embraced this ideaand began to conceptualize what such a music should consistof. In the following year, the Australian composer PercyGrainger was already convinced that his concept of FreeMusic could only be realized through use of electro-mechanical devices. By 1908 the Futurist Manifesto waspublished and the modernist ideology began its artists'revolt against existent social and cultural values. In 1913Luigi Russolo wrote The Art of Noise, declaring that the"evolution of music is paralleled by the multiplication ofthe machine". By the end of that year, Russolo and UgoPiatti had constructed an orchestra of electro-mechanicalnoise instruments (intonarumori) capable of realizing theirvision of a sound art which shattered the musical statusquo. Russolo desired to create a sound based art form out ofthe noise of modern life. His noise intoning devicespresented their array of "howlers, boomers, cracklers,scrapers, exploders, buzzers, gurglers, and whistles" tobewildered audiences in Italy, London, and finally Paris in1921, where he gained the attention of Varèse andStravinsky. Soon after this concert the instruments wereapparently only used commercially for generating soundeffects and were abandoned by Russolo in 1930.

Throughout the second decade of the 20th century therewas an unprecedented amount of experimental music activitymuch of which involved discourse about the necessity for new

instrumental resources capable of realizing the emergingtheories which rejected traditional compositional processes.Composers such as Ives, Satie, Cowell, Varèse, andSchoenberg were advancing the structural and instrumentalresources for music. It was into this intellectual climate,and into the cultural changes brought on by the RussianRevolution, that Leon Theremin (Lev Sergeyevich Termen)introduced the Aetherophone (later known as the Theremin), anew electronic instrument based on radio-frequencyoscillations controlled by hands moving in space over twoantennae. The extraordinary flexibility of the instrumentnot only allowed for the performance of traditionalrepertoire but also a wide range of new effects. Thetheatricality of its playing technique and the uniqueness ofits sound made the Theremin the most radical musicalinstrument innovation of the early 20th century.

The success of the Theremin brought its inventor amodest celebrity status. In the following years heintroduced the instrument to Vladimir Lenin, invented one ofthe earliest television devices, and moved to New York City.There he gave concerts with Leopold Stokowski, entertainedAlbert Einstein and married a black dancer named LaviniaWilliams. In 1932 he collaborated with the electronic imagepioneer Mary Ellen Bute to display mathematical formulas ona CRT synchronized to music. He also continued to invent newinstruments such as the Rhythmicon, a complex cross-rhythminstrument produced in collaboration with Henry Cowell. Uponhis return to the Soviet Union in 1938, Theremin was placedunder house arrest and directed to work for the state oncommunications and surveillance technologies until hisretirement in the late 1960's.

In many ways, Leon Theremin represents an archetypalexample of the artist/engineer whose brilliant initialcareer is coopted by industry or government. In his case theirony is particularly poignant in that he invented hisinstruments in the full flowering of the Bolshevikenthusiasm for progressive culture under Lenin andsubsequently fell prey to Stalin's ideology of fear andrepression. Theremin was prevented until 1991 (at 95 yearsof age) from stepping foot outside the USSR because hepossessed classified information about radar andsurveillance technologies that had been obsolete for years.This suppression of innovation through institutionalambivalence, censorship or cooptation is also one of therecurrent patterns of the artistic use of technologythroughout the 20th century. What often begins with thedesire to expand human perception ends with commoditizationor direct repression.

By the end of the 1920's a large assortment of newelectronic musical instruments had been developed. InGermany Jörg Mager had been experimenting with the design ofnew electronic instruments. The most successful was theSphärophon, a radio frequency oscillator based keyboardinstrument capable of producing quarter-tone divisions ofthe octave. Mager's instruments used loudspeakers withunique driver systems and shapes to achieve a variety ofsounds. Maurice Martenot introduced his Ondes Martenot inFrance where the instrument rapidly gained acceptance with awide assortment of established composers. New works werewritten for the instrument by Milhaud, Honegger, Jolivet,Varèse and eventually Messiaen who wrote Fête des BellesEaux for an ensemble of six Ondes Martenots in 1937 andlater as a solo instrument in his 3 petites liturgies of1944. The Ondes Martenot was based upon similar technologyas the Theremin and Sphärophon but introduced a much moresophisticated and flexible control strategy.

Other new instruments introduced around this time werethe Dynaphone of Rene Bertrand, the Hellertion of BrunoHelberger and Peter Lertes and an organ-like "synthesis"instrument devised by J. Givelet and E. Coupleaux which useda punched paper roll control system for audio oscillatorsconstructed with over 700 vacuum tubes. One of the longestlived of this generation of electronic instruments was theTrautonium of Dr. Friedrich Trautwein. This keyboardinstrument was based upon distinctly different technologythan the principles previously mentioned. It was one of thefirst instruments to use a neon-tube oscillator and itsunique sound could be selectively filtered duringperformance. Its resonance filters could emphasize specificovertone regions. The instrument was developed inconjunction with the Hochschule für Music in Berlin where aresearch program for compositional manipulation ofphonograph recordings had been founded two years earlier in1928. The composer Paul Hindemith participated in both ofthese endeavors, composing a Concertino for Trautonium andString Orchestra and a sound montage based upon phonographrecord manipulations of voice and instruments. Othercomposers who wrote for the Trautonium included RichardStrauss and Werner Egk. The greatest virtuoso of thisinstrument was the composer Oskar Sala who performed on it,and made technical improvements, into the 1960's. Also aboutthis time, the composer Robert Beyer published a curiouspaper about "space" or "room music" entitled Das Problem derKommender Musik that gained little attention from hiscolleagues. (Beyer's subsequent role in the history ofelectronic music will be discussed later.)

The German experiments in phonograph manipulationconstitute one of the first attempts at organizing soundelectronically that was not based upon an instrumentalmodel. While this initial attempt at the stipulation ofsound events through a kind of sculptural molding ofrecorded materials was short lived, it set in motion one ofthe main approaches to electronic composition to becomedominant in decades to come: the electronic music studio.Other attempts at a non-instrumental approach to soundorganization began in 1930 within both the USSR and Germany.With the invention of optical sound tracks for film a numberof theorists become inspired to experiment with syntheticsound generated through standard animation film techniques.In the USSR two centers for this research were established:A.M. Avzaamov, N.Y. Zhelinsky, and N.V. Voinov experimentedat the Scientific Experimental Film Institute in Leningradwhile E.A Scholpo and G.M. Rimski-Korsakov performed similarresearch at the Leningrad Conservatory. In the same year,Bauhaus artists performed experiments with hand-drawnwaveforms converted into sound through photoelectric cells.Two other German artists, Rudolph Pfenninger and OscarFischinger worked separately at about this time exploringsynthetic sound generation through techniques that weresimilar to Voinov and Avzaanov.

A dramatic increase in new electronic instruments soonappeared in subsequent years. All of them seem to have hadfascinating if not outrightly absurd names: the SonorousCross; the Electrochord; the Ondioline; the Clavioline; theKaleidophon; the Electronium Pi; the Multimonica; thePianophon; the Tuttivox; the Mellertion; the Emicon; theMelodium; the Oscillion; the Magnetton; the Photophone; theOrgatron; the Photona; and the Partiturophon. While most ofthese instruments were intended to produce new sonicresources, some were intended to replicate familiarinstrumental sounds of the pipe organ variety. It isprecisely this desire to replicate the familiar whichspawned the other major tradition of electronic instrumentdesign: the large families of electric organs and pianosthat began to appear in the early 1930's. Laurens Hammondbuilt his first electronic organ in 1929 using the sametone-wheel process as Cahill's Telharmonium. Electronicorgans built in the following years by Hammond included theNovachord and the Solovox. While Hammond's organ's wererejected by pipe organ enthusiasts because its additivesynthesis technique sounded too "electronic", he was thefirst to achieve both stable intonation through synchronizedelectromechanical sound generators and mass production of anelectronic musical instrument, setting a precedent for

popular acceptance. Hammond also patented a springreverberation technique that is still widely used.

The Warbo Formant Organ (1937) was one of the firsttruly polyphonic electronic instruments that could beconsidered a predecessor of current electronic organs. Itsdesigner the German engineer Harald Bode was one of thecentral figures in the history of electronic music in bothEurope and the United States. Not only did he contribute toinstrument design from the 1930's on, he was one of theprimary engineers in establishing the classic tape musicstudios in Europe. His contributions straddled the two majordesign traditions of new sounds versus imitation oftraditional ones without much bias since he was primarily anengineer interested in providing tools for a wide range ofmusicians. Other instruments which he subsequently builtincluded the Melodium, the Melochord and the Polychord(Bode's other contributions will be discussed later in thisessay).

By the late 1930's there was an increase ofexperimental activity in both Europe and the United States.1938 saw the installation of the ANS Synthesizer at theMoscow Experimental Music Studio. John Cage began his longfascination with electronic sound sources in 1939 with thepresentation of Imaginary Landscape No. 1, a liveperformance work whose score includes a part for discrecordings performed on a variable speed phonograph. Anumber of similar works utilizing recorded sound andelectronic sound sources followed. Cage had also been oneof the most active proselytizers for electronic musicthrough his writings, as were Edgard Varèse, JosephSchillinger, Leopold Stokowski, Henry Cowell, Carlos Chavezand Percy Grainger. It was during the 1930's that Graingerseriously began to pursue the building of technologicaltools capable of realizing his radical concept of Free Musicnotated as spatial non-tempered structures on graph paper.He composed such a work for an ensemble of four Theremins(1937) and began to collaborate with Burnett Cross to designa series of synchronized oscillator instruments controlledby a paper tape roll mechanism. These instruments saw anumber of incarnations until Grainger's death in 1961.

In 1939 Homer Dudley created the voder and the vocoderfor non-musical applications associated with speechanalysis. The voder was a keyboard-operated encodinginstrument consisting of bandpass channels for thesimulation of resonances in the human voice. It alsocontained tone and noise sources for imitating vowels andconsonants. The vocoder was the corresponding decoder which

consisted of an analyzer and synthesizer for analyzing andthen reconstituting the same speech. Besides being one ofthe first sound modification devices, the vocoder was totake on an important role in electronic music as a voiceprocessing device that is still widely in use today.

The important technical achievements of the 1930'sincluded the first successful television transmission andmajor innovations in audio recording. Since the turn of thecentury, research into improving upon the magnetic wirerecorder, invented by Valdemar Poulsen, had steadilyprogressed. A variety of improvements had been made, mostnotably the use of electrical amplification and theinvention of the Alternating Current bias technique. Thenext major improvement was the replacement of wire withsteel bands, a fairly successful technology that played asignificant role in the secret police of the Nazi party. TheGerman scientist Fritz Pfleumer had begun to experiment withoxide-coated paper and plastic tape as early as 1927 and theI.G. Farbenindustrie introduced the first practical plasticrecording tape in 1932. The most successful of the earlymagnetic recording devices was undoubtedly the AEGMagnetophone introduced in 1935 at the Berlin Radio Fair.This device was to become the prototypical magnetic taperecorder and was vastly superior to the wire recorders thenin use. By 1945 the Magnetophone adopted oxide-coated papertape. After World War II the patents for this technologywere transferred to the United States as war booty andfurther improvements in tape technology progressed there.Widespread commercial manufacturing and distribution ofmagnetic tape recorders became a reality by 1950.

The influence of World War II upon the arts wasobviously drastic. Most experimental creative activityceased and technical innovation was almost exclusivelydominated by military needs. European music was the mostseriously effected with electronic music research remainingdormant until the late 1940's. However, with magnetic taperecording technology now a reality, a new period of rapidinnovation took place. At the center of this new activitywas the ascendancy of the tape music studio as bothcompositional tool and research institution. Tape recordingrevolutionized electronic music more than any other singleevent in that it provided a flexible means to both store andmanipulate sound events. The result was the defining ofelectronic music as a true genre. While the history of thisgenre before 1950 has primarily focused upon instrumentdesigners, after 1950 the emphasis shifts towards thecomposers who consolidated the technical gains of the firsthalf of the 20th century.

Just prior to the event of the tape recorder, PierreSchaeffer had begun his experiments with manipulation ofphonograph recordings and quickly evolved a theoreticalposition which he named Musique Concrète in order toemphasize the sculptural aspect of how the sounds weremanipulated. Schaeffer predominantly used sounds of theenvironment that had been recorded through microphones ontodisc and later tape. These "sound objects" were thenmanipulated as pieces of sound that could be spliced intonew time relationships, processed through a variety ofdevices, transposed to different frequency registers throughtape speed variations, and ultimately combined into amontage of various mixtures of sounds back onto tape. In1948 Schaeffer was joined by the engineer Jacques Poullinwho subsequently played a significant role in the technicalevolution of tape music in France. That same year saw theinitial broadcast of Musique Concrète over French Radio andwas billed as a `concert de bruits'. The composer PierreHenry then joined Schaeffer and Poullin in 1949. Togetherthey constructed the Symphonie pour un homme seul, one ofthe true classics of early tape music completed before theyhad access to tape recorders.

By 1950 Schaeffer and Henry were working with magnetictape and the evolution of musique concrète proceeded at afast pace. The first public performance was given in thatsame year at the École Normale de Musique. In the followingyear, French National Radio installed a sophisticated studiofor the Group for Research on Musique Concrète. Over thenext few years significant composers began to be attractedto the studio including Pierre Boulez, Michel Philippot,Jean Barraqué, Phillipe Arthuys, Edgard Varèse, and OlivierMessiaen. In 1954 Varèse composed the tape part to Désertsfor orchestra and tape at the studio and the work saw itsinfamous premiere in December of that year.

Since Musique Concrète was both a musical and aestheticresearch project a variety of theoretical writings emergedto articulate the movement's progress. Of principalimportance was Schaeffer's book A la recherche d'une musiqueconcrète. In it he describes the group's experiments in apseudo-scientific manner that forms a lexicon of sounds andtheir distinctive characteristics which should determinecompositional criteria and organization. In collaborationwith A. Moles, Schaeffer specified a classification systemfor acoustical material according to orders of magnitude andother criteria. In many ways these efforts set the directionfor the positivist philosophical bias that has dominated the

"research" emphasis of electronic music institutions inFrance and elsewhere.

The sonic and musical characteristics of early musiqueconcrète were pejoratively described by Olivier Messiaen ascontaining a high level of surrealistic agony and literarydescriptivism. The movement's evolution saw most of theparticipating composers including Schaeffer move away fromthe extreme dislocations of sound and distortion associatedwith its early compositions and simple techniques.Underlying the early works was a fairly consistentphilosophy best exemplified by a statement by Schaeffer:

"I belong to a generation which is largely torn by dualisms.The catechism taught to men who are now middle-aged was atraditional one, traditionally absurd: spirit is opposed tomatter, poetry to technique, progress to tradition,individual to the group and how much else. From all this ittakes just one more step to conclude that the world isabsurd, full of unbearable contradictions. Thus a violentdesire to deny, to destroy one of the concepts, especiallyin the realm of form, where, according to Malraux, theAbsolute is coined. Fashion faintheartedly approved thisnihilism.

If musique concrète were to contribute to this movement, if,hastily adopted, stupidly understood, it had only to add itsadditional bellowing, its new negation, after so muchsmearing of the lines, denial of golden rules (such as thatof the scale), I should consider myself rather unwelcome. Ihave the right to justify my demand, and the duty to leadpossible successors to this intellectually honest work, tothe extent to which I have helped to discover a new way tocreate sound, and the means--as yet approximate--to give itform.

... Photography, whether the fact be denied or admitted, hascompletely upset painting, just as the recording of sound isabout to upset music .... For all that, traditional music isnot denied; any more than the theatre is supplanted by thecinema. Something new is added: a new art of sound. Am Iwrong in still calling it music?"

While the tape studio is still a major technical andcreative force in electronic music, its early history marksa specific period of technical and stylistic activity. Asrecording technology began to reveal itself to composers,many of whom had been anxiously awaiting such abreakthrough, some composers began to work under the

auspices of broadcast radio stations and recording studioswith professional tape recorders and test equipment in offhours. Others began to scrounge and share equipment whereverpossible, forming informal cooperatives based upon availabletechnology. While Schaeffer was defining musique concrète,other independent composers were experimenting with tape andelectronic sound sources. The end of 1940's saw Frenchcomposer Paul Boisselet compose some of the earliest liveperformance works for instruments, tape recorders andelectronic oscillators. In the United States, Bebe and LouisBarron began their pioneering experiments with tape collage.As early as 1948 the Canadian composer/engineer Hugh LeCaine was hired by the National Research Council of Canadato begin building electronic musical instruments.

In parallel to all of these events, another majorlineage of tape studio activity began to emerge in Germany.According to the German physicist Werner Meyer-Eppler theevents comprising the German electronic music history duringthis time are as follows. In 1948 the inventor of theVocoder, Homer Dudley, demonstrated for Meyer-Eppler hisdevice. Meyer-Eppler subsequently used a tape recording ofthe Vocoder to illustrate a lecture he gave in 1949 calledDevelopmental Possibilities of Sound. In the audience wasthe aforementioned Robert Beyer, now employed at theNorthwest German Radio, Cologne. Beyer must have beenprofoundly impressed by the presentation since it wasdecided that lectures should be formulated on the topic of"electronic music" for the International Summer School forNew Music in Darmstadt the following year. Much of thesubsequent lecture by Meyer-Eppler contained material fromhis classic book, Electronic Tone Generation, ElectronicMusic, and Synthetic Speech.

By 1951 Meyer-Eppler began a series of experiments withsynthetically generated sounds using Harald Bode's Melochordand an AEG magnetic tape recorder. Together with RobertBeyer and Herbert Eimert, Meyer-Eppler presented hisresearch as a radio program called "The World of Sound ofElectronic Music" over German Radio, Cologne. This broadcasthelped to convince officials and technicians of the Cologneradio station to sponsor an official studio forElektronischen Musik. From its beginning the Cologne studiodifferentiated itself from the Musique Concrète activitiesin Paris by limiting itself to "pure" electronic soundsources that could be manipulated through precisecompositional techniques derived from Serialism.

While one of the earliest compositional outcomes fromthe influence of Meyer-Eppler was Bruno Maderna's

collaboration with him entitled Musica su due Dimensioni forflute, percussion, and loudspeaker, most of the other worksthat followed were strictly concerned with utilizing onlyelectronic sounds such as pure sine-waves. One of the firstattempts at creating this labor intensive form of studiobased additive synthesis was Karlheinz Stockhausen whocreated his Étude out of pure sine-waves at the Paris studioin 1952. Similar works were produced at the Colognefacilities by Beyer and Eimert at about this time andsubsequently followed by the more sophisticated attempts byStockhausen, Studie I (1953) and Studie II (1954). In 1954 apublic concert was presented by Cologne radio that includedworks by Stockhausen, Goeyvaerts, Pousseur, Gredinger, andEimert. Soon other composers began working at the Colognestudio including Koenig, Heiss, Klebe, Kagel, Ligeti, Brünand Ernst Krenek. The later composer completed his SpiritusIntelligentiae Sanctus at the Cologne studio in 1956. Thiswork along with Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge, composedat the same time, signify the end of the short-lived pureelectronic emphasis claimed by the Cologne school. Bothworks used electronically generated sounds in combinationwith techniques and sound sources associated with musiqueconcrète.

While the distinction usually posited between the earlyParis and Cologne schools of tape music compositionemphasizes either the nature of the sound sources or thepresence of an organizational bias such as Serialism, I tendto view this distinction more in terms of a reorganizationat mid-century of the representationist versus modernistdialectic which appeared in prior decades. Even thoughSchaeffer and his colleagues were consciously aligned inovert ways with the Futurists' concern with noise, theytended to rely on dramatic expression that was dependentupon illusionistic associations to the sounds undergoingdeconstruction. The early Cologne school appears to havebeen concerned with an authentic and didactic display of theelectronic material and its primary codes as if it werepossible to reveal the metaphysical and intrinsic nature ofthe material as a new perceptual resource. Obviously thetechnical limitations of the studio at that time, inaddition to the aesthetic demands imposed by the currentissues of musicality, made their initial pursuit tooproblematic.

Concurrent with the tape studio developments in Franceand Germany there were significant advances occurring in theUnited States. While there was not yet any significantinstitutional support for the experimental work beingpursued by independent composers, some informal projects

began to emerge. The Music for Magnetic Tape Project wasformed in 1951 by John Cage, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff,David Tudor, and Morton Feldman and lasted until 1954. Sincethe group had no permanent facility, they relied on borrowedtime in commercial sound studios such as that maintained byBebe and Louis Barron or used borrowed equipment that theycould share. The most important work to have emerged fromthis collective was Cage's William's Mix. The compositionused hundreds of prerecorded sounds from the Barron'slibrary as the source from which to fulfill the demands of ameticulously notated score that specified not only thecategories of sounds to be used at any particular time butalso how the sounds were to be spliced and edited. The workrequired over nine months of intensive labor on the part ofCage, Brown and Tudor to assemble. While the final work maynot have sounded to untutored ears as very distinct from theother tape works produced in France or Cologne at the sametime, it nevertheless represented a radical compositionaland philosophical challenge to these other schools ofthought.

In the same year as Cage's William's Mix, VladimirUssachevsky gave a public demonstration of his tape musicexperiments at Columbia University. Working in almostcomplete isolation from the other experimenters in Europeand the United States, Ussachevsky began to explore tapemanipulation of electronic and instrumental sounds with verylimited resources. He was soon joined by Otto Luening andthe two began to compose in earnest some of the first tapecompositions in the United States at the home of HenryCowell in Woodstock, New York: Fantasy in Space, Low Speed,and Sonic Contours. The works, after completion inUssachevsky's living room in New York and in the basementstudio of Arturo Toscanini's Riverdale home, were presentedat the Museum of Modern Art in October of 1952.

Throughout the 1950's important work in electronicmusic experimentation only accelerated at a rapid pace. In1953 an Italian electronic music studio (Studio deFonologia) was established at the Radio Audizioni Italianein Milan. During its early years the studio attracted manyimportant international figures including Luciano Berio,Niccolo Castiglioni, Aldo Clementi, Bruno Maderna, LuigiNono, John Cage, Henri Pousseur, André Boucourechliev, andBengt Hambraeus. Studios were also established at thePhilips research labs in Eindhoven and at NHK (JapaneseBroadcasting System) in 1955. In that same year the DavidSarnoff Laboratories of RCA in Princeton, New Jerseyintroduced the Olson-Belar Sound Synthesizer to the public.As its name states, this instrument is generally considered

the first modern "synthesizer" and was built with thespecific intention of synthesizing traditional instrumentaltimbres for the manufacture of popular music. In aninteresting reversal of the usual industrial absorption ofartistic innovation, the machine proved inappropriate forits original intent and was later used entirely forelectronic music experimentation and composition. Since thedevice was based upon a combination of additive andsubtractive synthesis strategies, with a control systemconsisting of a punched paper roll or tab-card programmingscheme, it was an extremely sophisticated instrument for itstime. Not only could a composer generate, combine and filtersounds from the machine's tuning-fork oscillators and white-noise generators, sounds could be input from a microphonefor modification. Ultimately the device's design philosophyfavored fairly classical concepts of musical structure suchas precise control of twelve-tone pitch material and wastherefore favored by composers working within the serialgenre.

The first composers to work with the Olson-Belar SoundSynthesizer (later known as the RCA Music Synthesizer) wereVladimir Ussachevsky, Otto Luening and Milton Babbitt whomanaged to initially gain access to it at the RCA Labs.Within a few years this trio of composers in addition toRoger Sessions managed to acquire the device on a permanentbasis for the newly established Columbia-PrincetonElectronic Music Center in New York City. Because of itsadvanced facilities and policy of encouragement tocontemporary composers, the center attracted a large numberof international figures such as Alice Shields, Pril Smiley,Michiko Toyama, Bülent Arel, Mario Davidovsky, Halim El-Dabh, Mel Powell, Jacob Druckman, Charles Wourinen, andEdgard Varèse.

In 1958 the University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbanaestablished the Studio for Experimental Music. Under theinitial direction of Lejaren Hiller the studio became one ofthe most important centers for electronic music research inthe United States. Two years earlier, Hiller, who was also aprofessional chemist, applied his scientific knowledge ofdigital computers to the composition of the Illiac Suite forString Quartet, one of the first attempts at seriouscomputer-aided musical composition. In subsequent years theresident faculty connected with the Studio for ExperimentalMusic included composers Herbert Brün, Kenneth Gaburo, andSalvatore Martirano along with the engineer James Beauchampwhose Harmonic Tone Generator was one of the mostinteresting special sound generating instruments of theperiod.

By the end of the decade Pierre Schaeffer hadreorganized the Paris studio into the Groupe de Recherchesde Musicales and had abandoned the term musique concrète.His staff was joined at this time by Luc Ferrari andFrançois-Bernard Mache, and later by François Bayle andBernard Parmegiani. The Greek composer, architect andmathematician Yannis Xenakis was also working at the Parisfacility as was Luciano Berio. Xenakis produced his classiccomposition Diamorphoses in 1957 in which he formulated atheory of density change which introduced a new category ofsounds and structure into musique concrète.

In addition to the major technical developments andburgeoning studios just outlined there was also a dramaticincrease in the actual composition of substantial works.From 1950 to 1960 the vocabulary of tape music shifted fromthe fairly pure experimental works which characterized theclassic Paris and Cologne schools to more complex andexpressive works which explored a wide range ofcompositional styles. More and more works began to appear bythe mid-1950's which addressed the concept of combiningtaped sounds with live instruments and voices. There wasalso a tentative interest, and a few attempts, atincorporating taped electronic sounds into theatrical works.While the range of issues being explored was extremelybroad, much of the work in the various tape studios was anextension of the Serialism which dominated instrumentalmusic. By the end of the decade new structural conceptsbegan to emerge from working with the new electronic soundsources that influenced instrumental music. This expansionof timbral and organizational resources brought strictserialism into question.

In order to summarize the activity of the classic tapestudio period, a brief survey of some of the major works ofthe 1950's is called for. This list is not intended to beexhaustive but only to provide a few points of reference:

1949) Schaeffer and Henry: Symphonie pour un homme seul

1951) Grainger: Free Music

1952) Maderna: Musica su due Dimensioni; Cage: William'sMix; Luening: Fantasy in Space; Ussachevsky: Sonic Contours;Brau: Concerto de Janvier

1953) Schaeffer and Henry: Orphée; Stockhausen: Studie I

1954) Varèse: Déserts; Stockhausen: Studie II; Luening andUssachevsky: A Poem in Cycles and Bells

1955) B. & L. Barron: soundtrack to Forbidden Planet

1956) Krenek: Spiritus Intelligentiae Sanctus; Stockhausen:Gesang der Jünglinge; Berio: Mutazioni; Maderna: 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; Pousseur: RimesPour Différentes Sources Sonores

1959) Kagel: Transición II; Cage: Indeterminacy

1960) Berio: Differences; Gerhard: Collages; Maxfield: NightMusic; Ashley: The Fourth of July; Takemitsu: Water Music;Xenakis: Orient-Occident III

By 1960 the evolution of the tape studio wasprogressing dramatically. In Europe the institutionalsupport only increased and saw a mutual interest arise fromboth the broadcast centers and from academia. For instance,it was in 1960 that the electronic music studio at thePhilips research labs was transferred to the Institute ofSonology at the University of Utrecht. While in the UnitedStates it was always the universities that establishedserious electronic music facilities, that situation wasproblematic for certain composers who resisted theinstitutional milieu. Composers such as Gordon Mumma andRobert Ashley had been working independently with tape musicsince 1956 by gathering together their own technicalresources. Other composers who were interested in usingelectronics found that the tape medium was unsuited to theirideas. John Cage, for instance, came to reject the wholeaesthetic that accompanied tape composition as incompatiblewith his philosophy of indeterminacy and live performance.Some composers began to seek out other technical solutionsin order to specify more precise compositional control thanthe tape studio could provide them. It was into this climateof shifting needs that a variety of new electronic devicesemerged.

The coming of the 1960's saw a gradual culturalrevolution which was co-synchronous with a distinctacceleration of new media technologies. While the invention

of the transistor in 1948 at Bell Laboratories had begun toimpact electronic manufacturing, it was during the early1960's that major advances in electronic design took shape.The subsequent innovations and their impact upon electronicmusic were multifold and any understanding of them must becouched in separate categories for the sake of convenience.The categories to be delineated are 1) the emergence of thevoltage-controlled analog synthesizer; 2) the evolution ofcomputer music; 3) live electronic performance practice; and4) the explosion of multi-media. However, it is importantthat the reader appreciate that the technical categoriesunder discussion were never exclusive but in factinterpenetrated freely in the compositional and performancestyles of musicians. It is also necessary to point out thatany characterization of one form of technical means assuperior to another (i.e. computers versus synthesizers) isnot intentional. It is the author's contention that the verynature of the symbiosis between machine and artist is suchthat each instrument, studio facility, or computer programyields its own working method and unique artistic produce.Preferences between technological resources emerge from amatch between a certain machine and the imaginative intentof an artist, and not from qualities that are hierarchicallygermane to the history of technological innovation. Claimsfor technological efficiency may be relevant to a verylimited context but are ultimately absurd when viewed from abroader perspective of actual creative achievement.

1) The Voltage-Controlled Analog Synthesizer

A definition: Unfortunately the term "synthesizer" is agross misnomer. Since there is nothing synthetic about thesounds generated from this class of analog electronicinstruments, and since they do not "synthesize" othersounds, the term is more the result of a conceptualconfusion emanating from industrial nonsense about how theseinstruments "imitate" traditional acoustic ones. However,since the term has stuck, becoming progressively moreingrained over the years, I will use the term for the sakeof convenience. In reality the analog voltage-controlledsynthesizer is a collection of waveform and noisegenerators, modifiers (such as filters, ring modulators,amplifiers), mixers and control devices packaged in modularor integrated form. The generators produce an electronicsignal which can be patched through the modifiers and into amixer or amplifier where it is made audible throughloudspeakers. This sequence of interconnections constitutesa signal path which is determined by means of patch cords,switches, or matrix pinboards. Changes in the behaviors ofthe devices (such as pitch or loudness) along the signal

path are controlled from other devices which produce controlvoltages. These control voltage sources can be a keyboard, aribbon controller, a random voltage source, an envelopegenerator or any other compatible voltage source.

The story of the analog "synthesizer" has no singlebeginning. In fact, its genesis is an excellent example ofhow a good idea often emerges simultaneously in differentgeographic locations to fulfill a generalized need. In thiscase the need was to consolidate the various electronicsound generators, modifiers and control devices distributedin fairly bulky form throughout the classic tape studio. Thereason for doing this was quite straightforward: to providea personal electronic system to individual composers thatwas specifically designed for music composition and/or liveperformance, and which had the approximate technicalcapability of the classic tape studio at a lower cost. Thegeographic locales where this simultaneously occurred werethe east coast of the United States, San Francisco, Rome andAustralia.

The concept of modularity usually associated with theanalog synthesizer must be credited to Harald Bode, who in1960 completed the construction of his modular soundmodification system. In many ways this device predicted themore concise and powerful modular synthesizers that began tobe designed in the early 1960's and consisted of a ringmodulator, envelope follower, tone-burst-responsive envelopegenerator, voltage-controlled amplifier, filters, mixers,pitch extractor, comparator and frequency divider, and atape loop repeater. This device may have had some indirectinfluence on Robert Moog but the idea for his modularsynthesizer appears to have evolved from another set ofcircumstances.

In 1963, Moog was selling transistorized Theremins inkit form from his home in Ithaca, New York. Early in 1964the composer Herbert Deutsch was using one of theseinstruments and the two began to discuss the application ofsolid-state technology to the design of new instruments andsystems. These discussions led Moog to complete his firstprototype of a modular electronic music synthesizer laterthat year. By 1966 the first production model was availablefrom the new company he had formed to produce thisinstrument. The first systems which Moog produced wereprincipally designed for studio applications and weregenerally large modular assemblages that contained voltage-controlled oscillators, filters, voltage-controlledamplifiers, envelope generators, and a traditional stylekeyboard for voltage-control of the other modules.

Interconnection between the modules was achieved throughpatch cords. By 1969 Moog saw the necessity for a smallerportable instrument and began to manufacture the Mini Moog,a concise version of the studio system that contained anoscillator bank, filter, mixer, VCA and keyboard. As aninstrument designer Moog was always a practical engineer.His basically commercial but egalitarian philosophy is bestexemplified by some of the advertising copy whichaccompanied the Mini Moog in 1969 and resulted in itsbecoming the most widely used synthesizer in the "musicindustry":

"R.A. Moog, Inc. built its first synthesizer components in1964. At that time, the electronic music synthesizer was acumbersome laboratory curiosity, virtually unknown to thelistening public. Today, the Moog synthesizer has proven itsindispensability through its widespread acceptance. Moogsynthesizers are in use in hundreds of studios maintained byuniversities, recording companies, and private composersthroughout the world. Dozens of successful recordings, filmscores, and concert pieces have been realized on Moogsynthesizers. The basic synthesizer concept as developed byR.A. Moog, Inc., as well as a large number of technologicalinnovations, have literally revolutionized the contemporarymusical scene, and have been instrumental in bringingelectronic music into the mainstream of popular listening.

In designing the Mini Moog, R. A. Moog engineers talked withhundreds of musicians to find out what they wanted in aperformance synthesizer. Many prototypes were built over thepast two years, and tried out by musicians in actual live-performance situations. Mini Moog circuitry is a combinationof our time-proven and reliable designs with the latestdevelopments in technology and electronic components.

The result is an instrument which is applicable to studiocomposition as much as to live performance, to elementaryand high school music education as much as to universityinstruction, to the demands of commercial music as much asto the needs of the experimental avant garde. The Mini Moogoffers a truly unique combination of versatility,playability, convenience, and reliability at an eminentlyreasonable price."

In contrast to Moog's industrial stance, the rathercounter-cultural design philosophy of Donald Buchla and hisvoltage-controlled synthesizers can partially be attributedto the geographic locale and cultural circumstances of theirgenesis. In 1961 San Francisco was beginning to emerge as a

major cultural center with several vanguard composersorganizing concerts and other performance events. MortonSubotnick was starting his career in electronic musicexperimentation, as were Pauline Oliveros, Ramon Sender andTerry Riley. A primitive studio had been started at the SanFrancisco Conservatory of Music by Sender where he andOliveros had begun a series of experimental music concerts.In 1962 this equipment and other resources from electronicsurplus sources were pooled together by Sender and Subotnickto form the San Francisco Tape Music Center which was latermoved to Mills College in 1966. Because of the severelimitations of the equipment, Subotnick and Sender soughtout the help of a competent engineer in 1962 to realize adesign they had concocted for an optically-based soundgenerating instrument. After a few failures at hiring anengineer they met Donald Buchla who realized their designbut subsequently convinced them that this was the wrongapproach for solving their equipment needs. Their subsequentdiscussions resulted in the concept of a modular system.Subotnick describes their idea in the following terms:

"Our idea was to build the black box that would be a palettefor composers in their homes. It would be their studio. Theidea was to design it so that it was like an analogcomputer. It was not a musical instrument but it wasmodular...It was a collection of modules of voltage-controlled envelope generators and it had sequencers in itright off the bat...It was a collection of modules that youwould put together. There were no two systems the same untilCBS bought it...Our goal was that it should be under $400for the entire instrument and we came very close. That's whythe original instrument I fundraised for was under $500."

Buchla's design approach differed markedly from Moog.Right from the start Buchla rejected the idea of a"synthesizer" and has resisted the word ever since. He neverwanted to "synthesize" familiar sounds but rather emphasizednew timbral possibilities. He stressed the complexity thatcould arise out of randomness and was intrigued with thedesign of new control devices other than the standardkeyboard. He summarizes his philosophy and distinguishes itfrom Moog's in the following statement:

"I would say that philosophically the prime difference inour approaches was that I separated sound and structure andhe didn't. Control voltages were interchangeable with audio.The advantage of that is that he required only one kind ofconnector and that modules could serve more than onepurpose. There were several drawbacks to that kind of

general approach, one of them being that a module designedto work in the structural domain at the same time as theaudio domain has to make compromises. DC offset doesn't makeany difference in the sound domain but it makes a bigdifference in the structural domain, whereas harmonicdistortion makes very little difference in the control areabut it can be very significant in the audio areas. You alsohave a matter of just being able to discern what's happeningin a system by looking at it. If you have a very complexpatch, it's nice to be able to tell what aspect of the patchis the structural part of the music versus what is thesignal path and so on. There's a big difference in whetheryou deal with linear versus exponential functions at thecontrol level and that was a very inhibiting factor inMoog's more general approach.

Uncertainty is the basis for a lot of my work. One alwaysoperates somewhere between the totally predictable and thetotally unpredictable and to me the "source of uncertainty",as we called it, was a way of aiding the composer. Thepredictabilities could be highly defined or you could have asequence of totally random numbers. We had voltage controlof the randomness and of the rate of change so that youcould randomize the rate of change. In this way you couldmake patterns that were of more interest than patterns thatare totally random."

While the early Buchla instruments contained many ofthe same modular functions as the Moog, it also contained anumber of unique devices such as its random control voltagesources, sequencers and voltage-controlled spatial panners.Buchla has maintained his unique design philosophy over theintervening years producing a series of highly advancedinstruments often incorporating hybrid digital circuitry andunique control interfaces.

The other major voltage-controlled synthesizers toarise at this time (1964) were the Synket, a highly portableinstrument built by Paul Ketoff, and a unique machinedesigned by Tony Furse in Australia. According to composerJoel Chadabe, the Synket resulted from discussions betweenhimself, Otto Luening and John Eaton while these composerswere in residence in Rome. Chadabe had recently inspectedthe developmental work of Robert Moog and conveyed this toEaton and Luening. The engineer Paul Ketoff was enlisted tobuild a performance oriented instrument for Eaton whosubsequently became the virtuoso on this small synthesizer,using it extensively in subsequent years. The machine builtby Furse was the initial foray into electronic instrument

design by this brilliant Australian engineer. He laterbecame the principal figure in the design of some of theearliest and most sophisticated digital synthesizers of the1970's.

After these initial efforts, a number of other Americandesigners and manufacturers followed the lead of Buchla andMoog. One of the most successful was the Arp Synthesizerbuilt by Tonus, Inc. with design innovations by the team ofDennis Colin and David Friend. The studio version of the Arpwas introduced in 1970 and basically imitated modularfeatures of the Moog and Buchla instruments. A year laterthey introduced a smaller portable version which included apreset patching scheme that simplified the instrumentsfunction for the average pop-oriented performing musician.Other manufacturers included EML, makers of the Electro-Comp, a small synthesizer oriented to the educationalmarket; Oberhiem, one of the earliest polyphonicsynthesizers; muSonics' Sonic V Synthesizer; PAIA, makers ofa synthesizer in kit form; Roland; Korg; and the highlysophisticated line of modular analog synthesizer systemsdesigned and manufactured by Serge Tcherepnin and referredto as Serge Modular Music Systems.

In Europe the major manufacturer was undoubtedly EMS, aBritish company founded by its chief designer PeterZinovieff. EMS built the Synthi 100, a large integratedsystem which introduced a matrix-pinboard patching system,and a small portable synthesizer based on similar designprinciples initially called the Putney but later modifiedinto the Synthi A or Portabella. This later instrumentbecame very popular with a number of composers who used itin live performance situations.

One of the more interesting footnotes to this historyof the analog synthesizer is the rather problematicrelationship that many of the designers have had withcommercialization and the subsequent solution ofmanufacturing problems. While the commercial potential forthese instruments became evident very early on in the1960's, the different aesthetic and design philosophies ofthe engineers demanded that they deal with this realizationin different ways. Buchla, who early on got burnt by largercorporate interests, has dealt with the burden of marketingby essentially remaining a cottage industry, assembling andmarketing his instruments from his home in Berkeley,California. In the case of Moog, who as a fairly competentbusinessman grew a small business in his home into adistinctly commercial endeavor, even he ultimately left Moog

Music in 1977, after the company had been acquired by twolarger corporations, to pursue his own design interests.

It is important to remember that the advent of theanalog voltage-controlled synthesizer occurred within thecontext of the continued development of the tape studiowhich now included the synthesizer as an essential part ofits new identity as the electronic music studio. It wasestimated in 1968 that 556 non-private electronic musicstudios had been established in 39 countries. An estimated5,140 compositions existed in the medium by that time.

Some of the landmark voltage-controlled "synthesizer"compositions of the 1960's include works created with the"manufactured" machines of Buchla and Moog but other deviceswere certainly also used extensively. Most of these workswere tape compositions that used the synthesizer asresource. The following list includes a few of therepresentative tape compositions and works for tape withlive performers made during the 1960's with synthesizers andother sound sources.

1960) Stockhausen: Kontakte; Mache: Volumes

1961) Berio: Visage; Dockstader: Two Fragments FromApocalypse

1962) Xenakis: Bohor I; Philippot: Étude III; Parmegiani:Danse

1963) Bayle: Portraits de l'Oiseau-Qui-N'existe-Pas;Nordheim: Epitaffio

1964) Babbitt: Ensembles for Synthesizer; Brün: Futility;Nono: La Fabbrica Illuminata

1965) Gaburo: Lemon Drops; Mimaroglu: Agony; Davidovsky:Synchronisms No. 3

1966) Oliveros: I of IV; Druckman: Animus I

1967) Subotnick: Silver Apples of the Moon; Eaton: ConcertPiece for Syn-Ket and Symphony Orchestra; Koenig: TerminusX; Smiley: Eclipse

1968) Carlos: Switched-On Bach; Gaburo: Dante's Joynte;Nono: Contrappunto dialettico alla mente

1969) Wourinen: Time's Encomium; Ferrari: Music Promenade

1970) Arel: Stereo Electronic Music No. 2; Lucier: I amsitting in a room

2) Computer Music

A distinction: Analog refers to systems where aphysical quantity is represented by an analogous physicalquantity. The traditional audio recording chain demonstratesthis quite well since each stage of translation throughoutconstitutes a physical system that is analogous to theprevious one in the chain. The fluctuations of air moleculeswhich constitute sound are translated into fluctuations ofelectrons by a microphone diaphragm. These electrons arethen converted via a bias current of a tape recorder intopatterns of magnetic particles on a piece of tape. Uponplayback the process can be reversed resulting in thesefluctuations of electrons being amplified into fluctuationsof a loudspeaker cone in space. The final displacement ofair molecules results in an analogous representation of theoriginal sounds that were recorded. Digital refers tosystems where a physical quantity is represented through acounting process. In digital computers this counting processconsists of a two-digit binary coding of electrical on-offswitching states. In computer music the resultant digitalcode represents the various parameters of sound and itsorganization.

As early as 1954, the composer Yannis Xenakis had useda computer to aid in calculating the velocity trajectoriesof glissandi for his orchestral composition Metastasis.Since his background included a strong mathematicaleducation, this was a natural development in keeping withhis formal interest in combining mathematics and music. Thesearch that had begun earlier in the century for new soundsand organizing principles that could be mathematicallyrationalized had become a dominant issue by the mid-1950's.Serial composers like Milton Babbit had been dreaming of anappropriate machine to assist in complex compositionalorganization. While the RCA Music Synthesizer fulfilled muchof this need for Babbitt, other composers desired even moremachine-assisted control. Lejaren Hiller, a former studentof Babbitt, saw the compositional potential in the earlygeneration of digital computers and generated the IlliacSuite for string quartet as a demonstration of this promisein 1956.

Xenakis continued to develop, in a much moresophisticated manner, his unique approach to computer-assisted instrumental composition. Between 1956 and 1962 he

composed a number of works such as Morisma-Amorisma usingthe computer as a mathematical aid for finalizingcalculations that were applied to instrumental scores.Xenakis stated that his use of probabilistic theories andthe IBM 7090 computer enabled him to advance "...a form ofcomposition which is not the object in itself, but an ideain itself, that is to say, the beginnings of a family ofcompositions."

The early vision of why computers should be applied tomusic was elegantly expressed by the scientist Heinz VonFoerster:

"Accepting the possibilities of extensions in sounds andscales, how do we determine the new rules of synchronism andsuccession?

It is at this point, where the complexity of the problemappears to get out of hand, that computers come to ourassistance, not merely as ancillary tools but as essentialcomponents in the complex process of generating auditorysignals that fulfill a variety of new principles of ageneralized aesthetics and are not confined to conventionalmethods of sound generation by a given set of musicalinstruments or scales nor to a given set of rules ofsynchronism and succession based upon these very instrumentsand scales. The search for those new principles, algorithms,and values is, of course, in itself symbolic for our times."

The actual use of the computer to generate sound firstoccurred at Bell Labs where Max Mathews used a primitivedigital to analog converter to demonstrate this possibilityin 1957. Mathews became the central figure at Bell Labs inthe technical evolution of computer generated sound researchand compositional programming with computer over the nextdecade. In 1961 he was joined by the composer James Tenneywho had recently graduated from the University of Illinoiswhere he had worked with Hiller and Gaburo to finish a majortheoretical thesis entitled Meta/Hodos. For Tenney, the BellLab residency was a significant opportunity to apply hisadvanced theoretical thinking (involving the application oftheories from Gestalt Psychology to music and soundperception) into the compositional domain. From 1961 to 1964he completed a series of works which include what areprobably the first serious compositions using the MUSIC IVprogram of Max Mathews and Joan Miller and therefore thefirst serious compositions using computer-generated sounds:Noise Study, Four Stochastic Studies, Dialogue, StochasticString Quartet, Ergodos I, Ergodos II, and Phases.

In the following extraordinarily candid statement,Tenney describes his pioneering efforts at Bell Labs:

"I arrived at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in September,1961, with the following musical and intellectual baggage:1. numerous instrumental compositions reflecting theinfluence of Webern and Varèse;2. two tape-pieces, produced in the Electronic MusicLaboratory at the University of Illinois - both employingfamiliar, 'concrete' sounds, modified in various ways;

3. a long paper ("Meta/Hodos, A Phenomenology of 20thCentury Music and an Approach to the Study of Form", June,1961), in which a descriptive terminology and certainstructural principles were developed, borrowing heavily fromGestalt psychology. The central point of the paper involvesthe clang, or primary aural Gestalt, and basic laws ofperceptual organization of clangs, clang-elements, andsequences (a high-order Gestalt-unit consisting of severalclangs).

4. A dissatisfaction with all the purely syntheticelectronic music that I had heard up to that time,particularly with respect to timbre;

5. ideas stemming from my studies of acoustics, electronicsand - especially - information theory, begun in Hiller'sclass at the University of Illinois; and finally

6. a growing interest in the work and ideas of John Cage.

I leave in March, 1964, with:

1. six tape-compositions of computer-generated sounds - ofwhich all but the first were also composed by means of thecomputer, and several instrumental pieces whose compositioninvolved the computer in one way or another;

2. a far better understanding of the physical basis oftimbre, and a sense of having achieved a significantextension of the range of timbres possible by syntheticmeans;

3. a curious history of renunciations of one after anotherof the traditional attitudes about music, due primarily togradually more thorough assimilation of the insights of JohnCage.

In my two-and-a-half years here I have begun many morecompositions than I have completed, asked more questionsthan I could find answers for, and perhaps failed more oftenthan I have succeeded. But I think it could not have beenmuch different. The medium is new and requires new ways ofthinking and feeling. Two years are hardly enough to havebecome thoroughly acclimated to it, but the process has atleast begun."

In 1965 the research at Bell Labs resulted in thesuccessful reproduction of an instrumental timbre: a trumpetwaveform was recorded and then converted into a numericalrepresentation and when converted back into analog form wasdeemed virtually indistinguishable from its source. Thisaccomplishment by Mathews, Miller and the French composerJean Claude Risset marks the beginning of the recapitulationof the traditional representationist versus modernistdialectic in the new context of digital computing. Whencontrasted against Tenney's use of the computer to obtainentirely novel waveforms and structural complexities, theuse of such immense technological resources to reproduce thesound of a trumpet, appeared to many composers to be agigantic exercise in misplaced concreteness. When seen inthe subsequent historical light of the recent breakthroughsof digital recording and sampling technologies that can betraced back to this initial experiment, the originalcomputing expense certainly appears to have been vindicated.However, the dialectic of representationism and modernismhas only become more problematic in the intervening years.

The development of computer music has from itsinception been so critically linked to advances in hardwareand software that its practitioners have, until recently,constituted a distinct class of specialized enthusiastswithin the larger context of electronic music. The challengethat early computers and computing environments presented tocreative musical work was immense. In retrospect, the taskof learning to program and pit one's musical intelligenceagainst the machine constraints of those early days nowtakes on an almost heroic air. In fact, the development ofcomputer music composition is definitely linked to theevolution of greater interface transparency such that thetask of composition could be freed up from the other arduoustasks associated with programming. The first stage in thisevolution was the design of specific music-oriented programssuch as MUSIC IV. The 1960's saw gradual additions to theselanguages such as MUSIC IVB (a greatly expanded assemblylanguage version by Godfrey Winham and Hubert S. Howe);MUSIC IVBF (a fortran version of MUSIC IVB); and MUSIC360 (a

music program written for the IBM 360 computer by BarryVercoe). The composer Charles Dodge wrote during this timeabout the intent of these music programs for soundsynthesis:

"It is through simulating the operations of an idealelectronic music studio with an unlimited amount ofequipment that a digital computer synthesizes sound. Thefirst computer sound synthesis program that was trulygeneral purpose (i.e., one that could, in theory, produceany sound) was created at the Bell Telephone Laboratories inthe late 1950's. A composer using such a program musttypically provide: (1) Stored functions which will reside inthe computer's memory representing waveforms to be used bythe unit generators of the program. (2) "Instruments" of hisown design which logically interconnect these unitgenerators. (Unit generators are subprograms that simulateall the sound generation, modification, and storage devicesof the ideal electronic music studio.) The computer"instruments" play the notes of the composition. (3) Notesmay correspond to the familiar "pitch in time" or,alternatively, may represent some convenient way of dividingthe time continuum."

By the end of the 1960's computer sound synthesisresearch saw a large number of new programs in operation ata variety of academic and private institutions. The demandsof the medium however were still quite tedious and,regardless of the increased sophistication in control,remained a tape medium as its final product. Some composershad taken the initial steps towards using the computer forrealtime performance by linking the powerful controlfunctions of the digital computer to the sound generatorsand modifiers of the analog synthesizer. We will deal withthe specifics of this development in the next section. Fromits earliest days the use of the computer in music can bedivided into two fairly distinct categories even thoughthese categories have been blurred in some compositions: 1)those composers interested in using the computerpredominantly as a compositional device to generatestructural relationships that could not be imaginedotherwise and 2) the use of the computer to generate newsynthetic waveforms and timbres.

A few of the pioneering works of computer music from 1961 to1971 are the following:

1961) Tenney: Noise Study

1962) Tenney: Four Stochastic Studies

1963) Tenney: Phases

1964) Randall: Quartets in Pairs

1965) Randall: Mudgett

1966) Randall: Lyric Variations

1967) Hiller: Cosahedron

1968) Brün: Indefraudibles; Risset: Computer Suite fromLittle Boy

1969) Dodge: Changes; Risset: Mutations I

1970) Dodge: Earth's Magnetic Field

1971) Chowning: Sabelithe

3) Live Electronic Performance Practice

A Definition: For the sake of convenience I will definelive electronic music as that in which electronic soundgeneration, processing and control predominantly occurs inrealtime during a performance in front of an audience.

The idea that the concept of live performance withelectronic sounds should have a special status may seemludicrous to many readers. Obviously music has always been aperformance art and the primary usage of electronic musicalinstruments before 1950 was almost always in a liveperformance situation. However it must be remembered thatthe defining of electronic music as its own genre reallycame into being with the tape studios of the 1950's and thatthe beginnings of live electronic performance practice inthe 1960's was in large part a reaction to both a growingdissatisfaction with the perceived sterility of tape musicin performance (sound emanating from loudspeakers and littleelse) and the emergence of the various philosophicalinfluences of chance, indeterminacy, improvisation andsocial experimentation.

The issue of combining tape with traditional acousticinstruments was a major one ever since Maderna, Varèse,Luening and Ussachevsky first introduced such works in the1950's. A variety of composers continued to address thisproblem with increasing vigor into the 1960's. For many it

was merely a means for expanding the timbral resources ofthe orchestral instruments they had been writing for, whilefor others it was a specific compositional concern thatdealt with the expansion of structural aspects ofperformance in physical space. For instance Mario Davidovskyand Kenneth Gaburo have both written a series ofcompositions which address the complex contrapuntal dynamicsbetween live performers and tape: Davidovsky's Synchronisms1-8 and Gaburo's Antiphonies 1-10. These works demand a widevariety of combinations of tape channels, instruments andvoices in live performance contexts. In these and similarworks by other composers the tape sounds are derived fromall manner of sources and techniques including computersynthesis. The repertory for combinations of instruments andtape grew to immense international proportions during the1960's and included works from Australia, North America,South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan, andthe Middle East. An example of how one composer viewed thedynamics of relationship between tape and performers isstated by Kenneth Gaburo:

"On a fundamental level Antiphony III is a physicalinterplay between live performers and two speaker systems(tape). In performance, 16 soloists are divided into 4groups, with one soprano, alto, tenor, and bass in each. Thegroups are spatially separated from each other and from thespeakers. Antiphonal aspects develop between and among theperformers within each group, between and among groups,between the speakers, and between and among the groups andspeakers.

On another level Antiphony III is an auditory interplaybetween tape and live bands. The tape band may be dividedinto 3 broad compositional classes: (1) quasi-duplication oflive sounds, (2) electro-mechanical transforms of thesebeyond the capabilities of live performers, and (3) movementinto complementary acoustic regions of synthesizedelectronic sound. Incidentally, I term the union of theseclasses electronics, as distinct from tape content which ispure concrete-mixing or electronic sound synthesis. The liveband encompasses a broad spectrum from normal singing tovocal transmission having electronically associatedcharacteristics. The total tape-live interplay, therefore,is the result of discrete mixtures of sound, all having theproperties of the voice as a common point of departure."

Another important aesthetic shift that occurred withinthe tape studio environment was the desire to compose ontotape using realtime processes that did not require

subsequent editing. Pauline Oliveros and Richard Maxfieldwere early practitioners of innovative techniques thatallowed for live performance in the studio. Oliveroscomposed I of IV (1966) in this manner using tape delay andmixer feedback systems. Other composers discoveredsynthesizer patches that would allow for autonomousbehaviors to emerge from the complex interactions ofvoltage-control devices. The output from these systems couldbe recorded as versions on tape or amplified in liveperformance with some performer modification. EntropicalParadise (1969) by Douglas Leedy is a classic example ofsuch a composition for the Buchla Synthesizer.

The largest and most innovative category of liveelectronic music to come to fruition in the 1960's was theuse of synthesizers and custom electronic circuitry to bothgenerate sounds and process others, such as voice and/orinstruments, in realtime performance. The most simplisticexample of this application extends back to the very firstuse of electronic amplification by the early instruments ofthe 1930's. During the 1950's John Cage and David Tudor usedmicrophones and amplification as compositional devices toemphasize the small sounds and resonances of the pianointerior. In 1960 Cage extended this idea to the use ofphonograph cartridges and contact microphones in CartridgeMusic. The work focused upon the intentional amplificationof small sounds revealed through an indeterminate process.Cage described the aural product: "The sounds which resultare noises, some complex, others extremely simple such asamplifier feed-back, loud-speaker hum, etc. (All sounds,even those ordinarily thought to be undesirable, areaccepted in this music.)"

For Cage the abandonment of tape music and the movetoward live electronic performance was an essentialoutgrowth of his philosophy of indeterminacy. Cage'saesthetic position necessitated the theatricality andunpredictability of live performance since he desired acircumstance where individual value judgements would notintrude upon the revelation and perception of newpossibilities. Into the 1960's his fascination forelectronic sounds in indeterminate circumstances continuedto evolve and become inclusive of an ethical argument forthe appropriateness of artists working with technology ascritics and mirrors of their cultural environment. Cagecomposed a large number of such works during the 1960's,often enlisting the inspired assistance of like-mindedcomposer/performers such as David Tudor, Gordon Mumma, DavidBehrman, and Lowell Cross. Among the most famous of theseworks was the series of compositions entitled Variations of

which there numbered eight by the end of the decade. Theseworks were really highly complex and indeterminatehappenings that often used a wide range of electronictechniques and sound sources.

The composer/performer David Tudor was the musicianmost closely associated with Cage during the 1960's. As abrilliant concert pianist during the 1950's he hadchampioned the works of major avant-garde composers and thenshifted his performance activities to electronics during the1960's, performing other composer's live-electronic worksand his own. His most famous composition, Rainforest, andits multifarious performances since it was conceived in1968, almost constitute a musical sub-culture of electronicsound research. The work requires the fabrication of specialresonating objects and sculptural constructs which serve asone-of-a-kind loudspeakers when transducers are attached tothem. The constructed "loudspeakers" function to amplify andproduce both additive and subtractive transformations ofsource sounds such as basic electronic waveforms. In morerecent performances the sounds have included a wideselection of prerecorded materials.

While live electronic music in the 1960's waspredominantly an American genre, activity in Europe andJapan also began to emerge. The foremost European composerto embrace live electronic techniques in performance wasKarlheinz Stockhausen. By 1964 he was experimenting with thestraightforward electronic filtering of an amplified tam-tamin Microphonie I. Subsequent works for a variety ofinstrumental ensembles and/or voices, such as Prozession orStimmung, explored very basic but ingenious use ofamplification, filtering and ring modulation techniques inrealtime performance. In a statement about theexperimentation that led to these works, Stockhausen conveysa clear sense of the spirit of exploration into sound itselfthat purveyed much of the live electronic work of the1960's:

"Last summer I made a few experiments by activating the tam-tam with the most disparate collection of materials I couldfind about the house --glass, metal, wood, rubber, syntheticmaterials-- at the same time linking up a hand-heldmicrophone (highly directional) to an electric filter andconnecting the filter output to an amplifier unit whoseoutput was audible through loudspeakers. Meanwhile mycolleague Jaap Spek altered the settings of the filter andvolume controls in an improvisatory way. At the same time werecorded the results on tape. This tape-recording of ourfirst experiences in "microphony" was a discovery of the

greatest importance for me. We had come to no sort ofagreement: I used such of the materials I had collected as Ithought best and listened-in to the tam-tam surface with themicrophone just as a doctor might listen-in to a body withhis stethoscope; Spek reacted equally spontaneously to whathe heard as the product of our joint activity."

In many ways the evolution of live electronic musicparallels the increasing technological sophistication of itspractitioners. In the early 1960's most of the works withinthis genre were concerned with fairly simple realtimeprocessing of instrumental sounds and voices. LikeStockhausen's work from this period this may have been asbasic as the manipulation of a live performer through audiofilters, tape loops or the performer's interaction withacoustic feedback. Robert Ashley's Wolfman (1964) is anexample of the use of high amplification of voice to achievefeedback that alters the voice and a prerecorded tape.

By the end of the decade a number of composer's hadtechnologically progressed to designing their own customcircuitry. For example, Gordon Mumma's Mesa (1966) andHornpipe (1967) are both examples of instrumental piecesthat use custom-built electronics capable of semi-automaticresponse to the sounds generated by the performer orresonances of the performance space. One composer whose workillustrates a continuity of gradually increasing technicalsophistication is David Behrman. From fairly rudimentaryuses of electronic effects in the early 1960's his workprogressed through various stages of live electroniccomplexification to compositions like Runthrough (1968),where custom-built circuitry and a photo electric sounddistribution matrix is activated by performers withflashlights.

This trend toward new performance situations in whichthe technology functioned as structurally intrinsic to thecomposition continued to gain favor. Many composers began toexperiment with a vast array of electronic control devicesand unique sound sources which often required audioengineers and technicians to function as performingmusicians, and musicians to be technically competent. Sincethe number of such works proliferated rapidly, a fewexamples of the range of activities during the 1960's mustsuffice. In 1965, Alvin Lucier presented his Music for SoloPerformer 1965 which used amplified brainwave signals toarticulate the sympathetic resonances of an orchestra ofpercussion instruments. John Mizelle's Photo Oscillations(1969) used multiple lasers as light sources through whichthe performers walked in order to trigger a variety of

photo-cell activated circuits. Pendulum Music (1968) bySteve Reich simply used microphones suspended overloudspeakers from long cables. The microphones were set inmotion and allowed to generate patterns of feedback as theypassed over the loudspeakers. For these works, and manyothers like them, the structural dictates which emerged outof the nature of the chosen technology also defined aparticular composition as a unique environmental andtheatrical experience.

Co-synchronous with the technical and aestheticadvances that were occurring in live performance that I havejust outlined, the use of digital computers in liveperformance began to slowly emerge in the late 1960's. Themost comprehensive achievement at marrying digital controlsophistication to the realtime sound generation capabilitiesof the analog synthesizer was probably the Sal-MarConstruction (1969) of Salvatore Martirano. This hybridsystem evolved over several years with the help of manycolleagues and students at the University of Illinois.Considered by Martirano to be a composition unto itself, themachine consisted of a motley assortment of custom-builtanalog and digital circuitry controlled from a completelyunique interface and distributed through multiple channelsof loudspeakers suspended throughout the performance space.Martirano describes his work as follows:

The Sal-Mar Construction was designed, financed and built in1969-1972 by engineers Divilbiss, Franco, Borovec andcomposer Martirano here at the University of Illinois. It isa hybrid system in which TTL logical circuits (small andmedium scale integration) drive analog modules, such asvoltage-controlled oscillators, amplifiers and filters. TheSMC weighs 1500lbs crated and measures 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 speakersthat hang in a variety of patterns about the space. Thespeakers weigh about 6lbs. each, and are gently mobileaccording to air currents in the space. A changing patternof sound-traffic by 4 independently controlled programsproduces rich timbres that occur as the moving source ofsound causes the sound to literally bump into itself in theair, thus effecting phase cancellation and addition of thesignal.

The control panel has 291 touch-sensitive set/reset switchesthat are patched so that a tree of diverse signal paths isavailable to the performer. The output of the switch is

either set 'out1' or reset 'out2'. Further the 291 switchesare multiplexed down 4 levels. The unique characteristic ofthe switch is that it can be driven both manually andlogically, which allows human/machine interaction. Mostinnovative feature of the human/machine interface is that itallows the user to switch from control of macro to microparameters of the information output. This is analogous to azoom lens on a camera. A pianist remains at one level only,that is, on the keys. It is possible to assign performeractions to AUTO and allow the SMC to make all decisions.

One of the major difficulties with the hybridperformance systems of the late 1960's and early 1970's wasthe sheer size of digital computers. One solution to thisproblem was presented by Gordon Mumma in his compositionConspiracy 8 (1970). When the piece was presented at NewYork's Guggenheim Museum, a remote data-link was establishedto a computer in Boston which received information about theperformance in progress. In turn this computer then issuedinstructions to the performers and generated sounds whichwere also transmitted to the performance site through data-link.

Starting in 1970 an ambitious attempt at using the newmini-computers was initiated by Ed Kobrin, a former studentand colleague of Martirano. Starting in Illinois incollaboration with engineer Jeff Mack, and continuing at theCenter for Music Experiment at the University of California,San Diego, Kobrin designed an extremely sophisticated hybridsystem (actually referred to as Hybrid I through V) thatinterfaced a mini-computer to an array of voltage-controlledelectronic sound modules. As a live performance electronicinstrument, its six-voice polyphony, complexity and speed ofinteraction made it the most powerful realtime system of itstime. One of its versions is described by Kobrin:

"The most recent system consists of a PDP 11 computer with16k words of core memory, dual digital cassette unit, CRTterminal with ASCII keyboard, and a piano-type keyboard. Adigital interface consisting of interrupt modules, addressdecoding circuitry, 8 and 10 bit digital to analogconverters with holding registers, programmable counters anda series of tracking and status registers is hardwired to asynthesizer. The music generated is distributed to 16speakers creating a controlled sound environment."

Perhaps the most radical and innovative aspect of liveelectronic performance practice to emerge during this timewas the appearance of a new form of collective music making.

In Europe, North America and Japan several important groupsof musicians began to collaborate in collectivecompositional, improvisational, and theatrical activitiesthat relied heavily upon the new electronic technologies.Some of the reasons for this trend were: 1) the performancedemands of the technology itself which often requiredmultiple performers to accomplish basic tasks; 2) theimprovisatory and open-ended nature of some of the music wasfriendly and/or philosophically biased towards a diverse andflexible number of participants; and 3) the cultural andpolitical climate was particularly attuned to encouragingsocial experimentation.

As early as 1960, the ONCE Group had formed in AnnArbor, Michigan. Comprised of a diverse group of architects,composers, dancers, filmmakers, sculptors and theaterpeople, the Once Group presented the annual Once Festival.The principal composers of this group consisted of GeorgeCacioppo, Roger Reynolds, Donald Scavarda, Robert Ashley andGordon Mumma, most of whom were actively exploring tapemusic and developing live electronic techniques. In 1966Ashley and Mumma joined forces with David Behrman and AlvinLucier to create one of the most influential live electronicperformance ensembles, the Sonic Arts Union. While itsmembers would collaborate in the realization of compositionsby its members, and by other composers, it was not concernedwith collaborative composition or improvisation like manyother groups that had formed about the same time.

Concurrent with the ONCE Group activities were theconcerts and events presented by the participants of the SanFrancisco Tape Music Center such as Pauline Oliveros, TerryRiley, Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick. Likewise apowerful center for collaborative activity had developed atthe University of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana where HerbertBrün, Kenneth Gaburo, Lejaren Hiller, Salvatore Martirano,and James Tenney had been working. By the late 1960's asimilarly vital academic scene had formed at the Universityof California, San Diego where Gaburo, Oliveros, Reynoldsand Robert Erickson were now teaching.

In Europe several innovative collectives had alsoformed. To perform his own music Stockhausen had gatheredtogether a live electronic music ensemble consisting ofAlfred Alings, Harald Boje, Peter Eötvös, Johannes Fritsch,Rolf Gehlhaar, and Aloys Kontarsky. In 1964 an internationalcollective called the Gruppo di Improvisazione NuovaConsonanza was created in Rome for performing liveelectronic music. Two years later, Rome also saw theformation of Musica Elettronica Viva, one of the most

radical electronic performance collectives to advance groupimprovisation that often involved audience participation. Inits original incarnation the group included Allan Bryant,Alvin Curran, John Phetteplace, Frederic Rzewski, andRichard Teitelbaum.

The other major collaborative group concerned with theimplications of electronic technology was AMM in England.Founded in 1965 by jazz musicians Keith Rowe, Lou Gare andEddie Provost, and the experimental genius Cornelius Cardew,the group focused its energy into highly eclectic butdisciplined improvisations with electro-acoustic materials.In many ways the group was an intentional social experimentthe experience of which deeply informed the subsequentScratch Orchestra collective of Cardew's.

One final category of live electronic performancepractice involves the more focused activities of theMinimalist composers of the 1960's. These composers andtheir activities were involved with both individual andcollective performance activities and in large part confusedthe boundaries between the so-called "serious" avant-gardeand popular music. The composer Terry Riley exemplifies thisidea quite dramatically. During the late 1960's Rileycreated a very popular form of solo performance using windinstruments, keyboards and voice with tape delay systemsthat was an outgrowth from his early experiments intopattern music and his growing interest in Indian music. In1964 the New York composer LaMonte Young formed The Theatreof Eternal Music to realize his extended investigations intopure vertical harmonic relationships and tunings. Theensemble consisted of string instruments, singing voices andprecisely tuned drones generated by audio oscillators. Inearly performances the performers included John Cale, TonyConrad, LaMonte Young, and Marian Zazeela.

A very brief list of significant live electronic music worksof the 1960's is the following:

1960) Cage: Cartridge Music

1964) Young: The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys; Sender:Desert Ambulance; Ashley: Wolfman; Stockhausen: MikrophonieI

1965) Lucier: Music for Solo Performer

1966) Mumma: Mesa

1967) Stockhausen: Prozession; Mumma: Runthrough

1968) Tudor: Rainforest; Behrman: Runthrough

1969) Cage and Hiller: HPSCHD; Martirano: Sal-MarConstruction; Mizelle: Photo Oscillations

1970) Rosenboom: Ecology of the Skin

4) Multi-Media

The historical antecedents for mixed-media connectmultiple threads of artistic traditions as diverse astheatre, cinema, music, sculpture, literature, and dance.Since the extreme eclecticism of this topic and the sheervolume of activity associated with it is too vast for thefocus of this essay, I will only be concerned with a fewexamples of mixed-media activities during the 1960's thatimpacted the electronic art and music traditions from whichsubsequent video experimentation emerged.

Much of the previously discussed live electronic musicof the 1960's can be placed within the mixed-media categoryin that the performance circumstances demanded by thetechnology were intentionally theatrical or environmental.This emphasis on how technology could help to articulate newspatial relationships and heightened interaction between thephysical senses was shared with many other artists from thevisual, theatrical and dance traditions. Many new termsarose to describe the resulting experiments of variousindividuals and groups such as "happenings," "events,""action theatre," "environments," or what RichardKostelanetz called "The Theatre of Mixed-Means." In manyways the aesthetic challenge and collaborative agenda ofthese projects was conceptually linked to the variouscounter-cultural movements and social experiments of thedecade. For some artists these activities were a directcontinuity from participation in the avant-garde movementsof the 1950's such as Fluxus, electronic music, "kineticsculpture," Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, and forothers they were a fulfillment of ideas about the merger ofart and science initiated by the 1930's Bauhaus artists.

Many of the performance groups already mentioned wereengaged in mixed-media as their principal activity. InMichigan, the ONCE Group had been preceded by theManifestations: Light and Sound performances and SpaceTheatre of Milton Cohen as early 1956. The filmmaker JordanBelson and Henry Jacobs organized the Vortex performances inSan Francisco the following year. Japan saw the formation ofTokyo's Group Ongaku and Sogetsu Art Center with Kuniharu

Akiyama, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Joji Yuasa, Takahisa Kosugi, andChieko Shiomi in the early 1960's. At the same time were theritual oriented activities of LaMonte Young's The Theatre ofEternal Music. The group Pulsa was particularly activethrough the late sixties staging environmental light andsound works such as the Boston Public Gardens Demonstration(1968) that used 55 xenon strobe lights placed underwater inthe garden's four-acre pond. On top of the water were placed52 polyplanar loudspeakers which were controlled, along withthe lights, by computer and prerecorded magnetic tape. Thisresulted in streams of light and sound being projectedthroughout the park at high speeds. At the heart of thisevent was the unique Hybrid Digital/Analog Audio Synthesizerwhich Pulsa designed and used in most of their subsequentperformance events.

In 1962, the USCO formed as a radical collective ofartists and engineers dedicated to collective action andanonymity. Some of the artists involved were Gerd Stern,Stan Van Der Beek, and Jud Yalkut. As Douglas Davisdescribes them:

"USCO's leaders were strongly influenced by McLuhan's ideasas expressed in his book Understanding Media. Theirenvironments--performed in galleries, churches, schools, andmuseums across the United States--increased in complexitywith time, culminating in multiscreen audiovisual "worlds"and strobe environments. They saw technology as a means ofbringing people together in a new and sophisticatedtribalism. In pursuit of that ideal, they lived, worked, andcreated together in virtual anonymity."

The influence of McLuhan also had a strong impact uponJohn Cage during this period and marks a shift in his worktoward a more politically and socially engaged discourse.This shift was exemplified in two of his major works duringthe 1960's which were large multi-media extravaganza'sstaged during residencies at the University of Illinois in1967 and 1969: Musicircus and HPSCHD. The later work wasconceived in collaboration with Lejaren Hiller andsubsequently used 51 computer-generated sound tapes, inaddition to seven harpsichords and numerous film projectionsby Ronald Nameth.

Another example of a major mixed-media work composedduring the 1960's is the Teatro Probabilistico III (1968)for actors, musicians, dancers, light, TV cameras, publicand traffic conductor by the brazilian composer Jocy deOliveira. She describes her work in the following terms that

are indicative of a typical attitude toward mixed mediaperformance at that time:

"This piece is an exercise in searching for total perceptionleading to a global event which tends to eliminate the setrole of public versus performers through a complementaryinteraction. The community life and the urban space are usedfor this purpose. It also includes the TV communication on apermutation of live and video tape and a transmutation fromutilitarian-camera to creative camera.

The performer is equally an actor, musician, dancer, light,TV camera/video artist or public. They all are directed by atraffic conductor. He represents the complex contradictionof explicit and implicit. He is a kind of military God whocontrols the freedom of the powers by dictating ordersthrough signs. He has power over everything and yet hecannot predict everything. The performers improvise on atime-event structure, according to general directions. Thenumber of performers is determined by the spacepossibilities. It is preferable to use a downtown pedestrianarea. The conductor should be located in the center of theperforming area visible to the performers (over a platform).He should wear a uniform representing any high rank.

For the public as well as the performers this is an exercisein searching for a total experience in complete perception."

One of the most important intellectual concerns toemerge at this time amongst most of these artists was anexplicit embracing of technology as a creative counter-cultural force. In addition to McLuhan, the figure ofBuckminster Fuller had a profound influence upon an entiregeneration of artists. Fuller's assertion that the radicaland often negative changes wrought by technologicalinnovation were also opportunities for proper understandingand redirection of resources became an organizing principlefor vanguard thinkers in the arts. The need to taketechnology seriously as the social environment in whichartists lived and formulated critical relationships with theculture at large became formalized in projects such asExperiments in Art and Technology, Inc. and the variousfestivals and events they sponsored: Nine Evenings: Theaterand Engineering; Some More Beginnings; the series ofperformances presented at Automation House in New York Cityduring the late 1960's; and the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion for Expo70 in Osaka, Japan. One of the participants in Expo 70,Gordon Mumma, describes the immense complexity and

sophistication that mixed-media presentations had evolvedinto by that time:

"The most remarkable of all multi-media collaborations wasprobably the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion for Expo 70 in Osaka. Thisproject included many ideas distilled from previous multi-media activities, and significantly advanced both the artand technology by numerous innovations. The Expo 70 pavilionwas remarkable for several reasons. It was an internationalcollaboration of dozens of artists, as many engineers, andnumerous industries, all coordinated by Experiments in Artand Technology, inc. From several hundred proposals, theprojects of twenty-eight artists and musicians were selectedfor presentation in the pavilion. The outside of thepavilion was a 120-foot-diameter geodesic dome of whiteplastic and steel, enshrouded by an ever-changing,artificially generated water-vapor cloud. The public plazain front of the pavilion contained seven man-sized, sound-emitting floats, that moved slowly and changed directionwhen touched. A thirty-foot polar heliostat sculpturetracked the sun and reflected a ten-foot-diameter sunbeamfrom its elliptical mirror through the cloud onto thepavilion. The inside of the pavilion consisted of two largespaces, one black-walled and clam-shaped, the other aninety-foot high hemispherical mirror dome. The sound andlight environment of these spaces was achieved by aninnovative audio and optical system consisting of state-of-the -art analog audio circuitry, with krypton-laser,tungsten, quartz-iodide, and xenon lighting, all controlledby a specially designed digital computer programmingfacility.

The sound, light, and control systems, and their integrationwith the unique hemispherical acoustics and optics of thepavilion, were controlled from a movable console. On thisconsole the lighting and sound had separate panels fromwhich the intensities, colors, and directions of thelighting, pitches, loudness, timbre, and directions of thesound could be controlled by live performers. The sound-moving capabilities of the dome were achieved with a rhombicgrid of thirty-seven loudspeakers surrounding the dome, andwere designed to allow the movement of sounds from point,straight line, curved, and field types of sources. The speedof movement could vary from extremely slow to fast enough tolose the sense of motion. The sounds to be heard could befrom any live, taped, or synthesized source, and up tothirty-two different inputs could be controlled at one time.Furthermore, it was possible to electronically modify theseinputs by using eight channels of modification circuitry

that could change the pitch, loudness, and timbre in a vastnumber of combinations. Another console panel containeddigital circuitry that could be programmed to automaticallycontrol aspects of the light and sound. By their programmingof this control panel, the performers could delegate anyamount of the light and sound functions to the digitalcircuitry. Thus, at one extreme the pavilion could beentirely a live-performance instrument, and at the other, anautomated environment. The most important design concept ofthe pavilion was that it was a live-performance, multi-mediainstrument. Between the extremes of manual and automaticcontrol of so many aspects of environment, the artist couldestablish all sorts of sophisticated man-machine performanceinteractions."

Consolidation: the 1970 and 80's

The beginning of the 1970's saw a continuation of mostof the developments initiated in the 1960's. Activities wereextremely diverse and included all the varieties ofelectronic music genres previously established throughoutthe 20th century. Academic tape studios continued to thrivewith a great deal of unique custom-built hardware beingconceived by engineers, composers and students. Hundreds ofprivate studios were also established as the price oftechnology became more affordable for individual artists.Many more novel strategies for integrating tape and liveperformers were advanced as were new concepts for liveelectronics and multi-media. A great rush of activity in newcircuit design also took place and the now familiar patternof continual miniaturization with increased power and memoryexpansion for computers began to become evident. Along withthis increased level of electronic music activity, twosignificant developments became evident: 1) what had beenfor decades a pioneering fringe activity within the largercontext of music as a cultural activity now begins to becomedominant; and 2) the commercial and sophisticated industrialmanufacturing of electronic music systems and materials thathad been fairly esoteric emerges in response to thisawareness. The result of these new factors signals the endof the pioneering era of electronic music and the beginningof a post-modern aesthetic that is predominantly driven bycommercial market forces.

By the end of the 1970's most innovations in hardwaredesign had been taken over by industry in response to theemerging needs of popular culture. The film and music"industries" became the major forces in establishingtechnical standards which impacted subsequent electronic

music hardware design. While the industrialrepresentationist agenda succeeded in the guise of popularculture, some pioneering creative work continued within thedivergent contexts of academic tape studios and computermusic research centers and in the non-institutionalaesthetic research of individual composers. Whilespecialized venues still exist where experimental work canbe heard, it has been an increasing tendency that access tosuch work has gotten progressively more problematic.

One of the most important shifts to occur in the 1980'swas the progressive move toward the abandonment of analogelectronics in favor of digital systems which couldpotentially recapitulate and summarize the prior history ofelectronic music in standardized forms. By the mid-1980'sthe industrial onslaught of highly redundant MIDIinterfaceable digital synthesizers, processors, and samplerseven began to displace the commercial merchandizing oftraditional acoustic orchestral and band instruments. By1990, the presence of these commercial technologies hadbecome a ubiquitous cultural presence that largely definedthe nature of the music being produced.

Conclusion

What began in this century as a utopian and vaguelyRomantic passion, namely that technology offered anopportunity to expand human perception and provide newavenues for the discovery of reality, subsequently evolvedthrough the 1960's into an intoxication with this humanisticagenda as a social critique and counter-cultural movement.The irony is that many of the artist's who were mostconcerned with technology as a counter-cultural socialcritique built tools that ultimately became the resourcesfor an industrial movement that in large part eradicatedtheir ideological concerns. Most of these artists and theirwork have fallen into the anonymous cracks of a consumerculture that now regards their experimentation merely asinherited technical R & D. While the mass distribution ofthe electronic means of musical production appears to be anegalitarian success, as a worst case scenario it may alsosignify the suffocation of the modernist dream at the handsof industrial profiteering. To quote the philosopher JacquesAttali:

"What is called music today is all too often only a disguisefor the monologue of power. However, and this is the supremeirony of it all, never before have musicians tried so hardto communicate with their audience, and never before hasthat communication been so deceiving. Music now seems hardly

more than a somewhat clumsy excuse for the self-glorification of musicians and the growth of a newindustrial sector."

From a slightly more optimistic perspective, thecurrent dissolving of emphasis upon heroic individualartistic contributions, within the context of the currentproliferation of musical technology, may signify theemergence of a new socio-political structure: the means tocreate transcends the created objects and the personality ofthe object's creator. The mass dissemination of new toolsand instruments either signifies the complete failure of themodernist agenda or it signifies the culminating expressionof commoditization through mass production of the toolsnecessary to deconstruct the redundant loop of consumption.After decades of selling records as a replacement for theexperience of creative action, the music industry now sellsthe tools which may facilitate that creative participation.We shift emphasis to the means of production instead of theproduction of consumer demand.

Whichever way the evolution of electronic music unfoldswill depend upon the dynamical properties of a dialecticalsynthesis between industrial forces and the survival of themodernist belief in the necessity for technology as ahumanistic potential. Whether the current users of thesetools can resist the redundancy of industrial determineddesign biases, induced by the cliches of commercial marketforces, depends upon the continuation of a belief in thenecessity for alternative voices willing to articulate thatwhich the status quo is unwillingly to hear.