Electronic Music

History of Electronic music

In electronic music meet two conflicting spheres of human endeavor: the artistic and aesthetic of the music and the science of physics and electrical engineering. Thus considered to be the development of their requirements from a history of ideas and a technical perspective. In the wake of the radical musical changes that the 20th Century the century of the “new music” can be, the electronic music plays an important role. Of fundamental importance are those first concepts that already presuppose possibilities of electronic music, even before they actually (technically) were available:

The first musical instrument, the electricity used was the Clavecin électrique by Jean-Baptiste Delaborde. The Denis d’or often called the Father Prokop Divis Czech inventor from the year 1730 was indeed able to move players from the fun little electric shocks, but in fact no electricity used in the production of sound.  in 1867 constructed the Director of telegraph works Hipp Neuchâtel an electro-mechanical piano. A first patent in the field of electronic sound production was granted in 1885 to E. Lorenz .

An unusual invention of the electronic musical instrument design was developed by Thaddeus Cahill 1897 Tele Dynamophon or harmonium. It worked on the principle of a gear generator, weighed 200 tons and was as big as a boxcar. Cahill used for each half a giant steam-powered multi-generator, which provided him with the sinusoidal output voltages.  In his 1907 published draft of a new aesthetic of music developed Ferruccio Busoni his theory of third sound, which he regarded as its sonic realization that Dynamophon most suitable.

Leon Theremin designed as head of the Laboratory of electrical oscillations of the state physical-technical institute in Leningrad from 1920 to 1928, the sensational etherophone instrument, the theremin was later named after him. The instrument was technically a buzzer beating design, ie the generation of an audible tone was made by superimposing two high-frequency sounds and is no longer audible.  This characteristic of sound production inspired several composers to works specifically for the theremin. Anis Fuleihan by the composer created in this way a concerto for theremin and orchestra, premiered in 1945 with the New York Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski and the soloist Clara Rockmore on Theremin.

Around the same time dealt the German elementary school teacher and organist Jörg Mager with the exact generation of micro-intervals and introduced innovations such as the Electrophonic (1921) and the Sphärophon (1928). Mager was an adherent of the Czech composer Alois Haba, who, practically employed by the excitation of Ferruccio Busoni, already with micro-intervals. Moreover headed skimmed from his interest in micro-intervals of observation of the acoustic engineer and ethnomusicologist Erich Moritz von Hornbostel, that the melody for a change of pitch location, but also the length of notes, always as one and see the same figure. So later be Sphärophon II, his and his Kaleidosphon Elektrotonorgel been completed .

At the “Ondes Martenot” it was also a tone frequency generating beat the buzzer with a difference that was also pulled by a rope, which pitch could be changed. Olivier Messiaen has used this instrument in its Turangalîla Symphony, the Swiss composer Arthur Honegger’s oratorio Joan it sat in one at the stake. Already in 1907, Busoni had shown in his visionary and influential publication “Design of a New Aesthetic of Music” possible lines of development that could be realized only by means of electronic music from the 1950s. He attacked, among other things, the idea of ​​”sound color melody”, the Arnold Schoenberg first presented in his “Theory of Harmony” (1911) and has repeatedly addressed in the following years, of relevance to the musical concept of early electronic music. Furthermore, the compositional conception Edgar Varèse be considered with their equally by Busoni and the Italian Futurists influenced noisiness as an anticipation of the possibilities of purely electronic sound design.

Due to the importance of radio as a medium to achieve political goals first and then the conversation the way for transfers of music has been paved.

In this same period when the development of Trautonium by Friedrich Trautwein in 1930, which was later further developed by Oskar SalaFrom this year are also the first Trautoniumstücke by Paul Hindemith. Four Pieces for three wedding Toni with the subtitle The small electric musician favorites .

In 1935, competed with the Hammond organ and the Lichttonorgel, with the former gaining the upper hand.
Development

→ Main article: Electro-mechanical musical instruments and electronic musical instrument

The history of electronic music is closely linked to the history of electronic sound (instruments, apparatus) coupled. In general, we speak up about 1940 of the electric music of electrical and musical instruments. Starting in the early 1950s, a specific compositional technique implemented with electronic devices called electronic music.
“Musique concrète” from Paris

→ main article: Musique concrète

1943 called the engineer Pierre Schaeffer, a research center for radiophonic art in Paris, the Club d’Essai, in life, soon artists like Pierre Henry, Pierre Boulez, Jean Barraqué, Olivier Messiaen and early 1950s attracted then Karlheinz Stockhausen. On 5 October 1948 went to the Paris radio Schaeffer’s Cinq études de bruits concrète in a concert titled as the Bruits radio program on the airwaves and thus marking the birth of musique. On 18 March 1950 then took place the first public concert of concrete music in the Ecole Normale de Musique. Since the early days of “Club d’Essai” outside of Germany no tape recorders were available, the sounds were recorded on tapes and in one operation from up to eight mixed record. In the processing of these sounds, the simple everyday sounds were, it was their transformation and collage-like combination. Aesthetically, it turns out the early musique concrète as a precursor to the radio play and the radiophonic collage. The term “concrete music”, the suggested Schaeffer 1949, contributes to the use of found sounds one – so-called “sound objects” – account should also be understood as a distinction from the composed and so “abstract” music (serialism). With this radical (BRUITIST) approach Schaeffer also caused some irritation in his own camp. In the 1950s, allowed the recording on magnetic tape and in Paris the introduction of further processing techniques such as cutting, speed, and transformations that changes pitch. Through these opportunities arose at this time the LCD Soundsystem ve, a kind of Klangtransponiermöglichkeit Mellotron, and the Morphophon, like a tape loop delay device.

Aware of the public interested in the musique concrète was so in direct rivalry to the simultaneous-onset “electronic music” from Cologne. In the early 1950s the work of his collaborator Pierre Schaeffer and Henry was involved in a kind of ideological and sometimes chauvinistic motivated strife. A debakulöse performance of their joint composition Orphée 53, at the Donaueschingen Music Festival on 10 October 1953 took place, sealed their “defeat” and harmed the international image of musique concrète for years to come. The composers in the early 1950s, the Groupe de Recherches de Musique concrète (in 1951 from the Club d’Essai had emerged) were close, have certainly tried in the musique concrète compositional principles of order to introduce, but could not against the sound design Schaeffer’s put through. 1954 Edgar Varèse realized the tapes as a guest for his composition Deserts. It was not until 1956/57 created works of Luc Ferrari, Iannis Xenakis, François Bayle, and others who presented a much greater extent compositional aspects and later even serial principles to the fore. Consequently, Schaeffer gave the term “musique concrète” now in favor of “electro-acoustic music” and named his Groupe de Recherches de Musique concrète in 1958, Groupe de Recherches Musicales.
Electronic music from Cologne

→ Main article: Electronic Music Studio (Cologne)

When Werner Meyer-Eppler for a particular type of composition with technical aids the term “electronic music” suggested, he was not primarily a distinction from the previous developments of the electronic sound generation, the electric music to which he concrète also Musique and Music for the tape (see below) was one of.

The physicist Werner Meyer-Eppler, the engineer, Robert Beyer, the engineer Fritz and grandson of composer Herbert Eimert founded in 1951 with the help of NWDR the Cologne Studio for Electronic Music. The first public concert took place on 26th May 1953 at the Cologne “New Music Festival 1953″ instead. In contrast to the Musique concrète was an attempt to collect electronically generated sounds too scientific to physical laws such as the Fourier analysis. The timbre was as a result of the superposition of several sine waves, and the parameters of frequency, amplitude and duration also analyzed in detail.

Initially it was Eimert and Beyer (only) to the sophisticated design of sound colors. It was only a second generation of young composers, among them Henri Pousseur, Karel Goyvaerts and Karlheinz Stockhausen, then worked from 1953 primarily due to the consistent execution of serial composition techniques using electronic means. Significantly for this early musical conception of the Cologne studio is the exclusive use of “synthetic” sounds produced as well as their direct processing and storage on magnetic tape and then playing through loudspeakers. This was (at least theoretically) achieved two historic musical revolutionary things: first, the complete control over the parameters of timbre, which had previously been for the composer always uncertain and now also the serial method of organization could be subjected. Second, the interpreter as intermediary – and thus potentially distorting the composer’s intention – off instance. For the first time in the history of Western music, it seemed to the composer with such works as Stockhausen’s Studie II possible, their ideas, “suddenly” passed on to the listener. The centuries-old attempts to fix the musical intention of increasing precision by musical notation, were overtaken.

Since the sonic results of this early work, but remained well below the expectations set for them, we trod in the art of sound synthesis, new ways, and left again in 1954, the original concept of sine wave. With the growing complexity of the manufacturing process, then took one hand off the sound quality and also removed the sound components are increasingly controlled by the composer. A first consequence Stockhausen moved into his composition Song of the Youths (1955/56), which mediates between conceptual electronic sounds and phonemes, and statistical principles (aleatory) distributed in space by groups of speakers brought to the application.

Has taken the idea of ​​aural mediation between heterogeneous starting materials leads consistently to the design of live electronics and also for the transformation of sounds from any source, making the development of electronic music in Cologne expression of its closest approach to the former “sworn enemy Musique concète”. Following the example of the Cologne studios were founded in the sequence (including Milan, Basel, Dresden, Stockholm and Utrecht) appropriate facilities that exist in part today.
“Music for Tape”

In the so-called Tape Music Center at Columbia-Princeton University in New York taught Vladimir Ussachevski and Otto Luening students in a special way of dealing with recorded sounds on tape. They assumed that the wide range of possible electronic manipulation of the origin of the sound can be more and more into the background.  first reported study are the Tape Music for the New York couple Louis and Bebe Barron, who since 1948 in their own professional recording studio with advanced capabilities of the tape music production employed.  In the studio, the Barrons John realized Cage in 1951, the Project of Music for Magnetic Tape, together with the composer Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, David Tudor and Christian Wolff.

Was at the Music for tape especially the diversity in the selection and editing of sound sources for the musical interpretation of meaning. In America, the distinction between controllable (electronic) and “uncontrollable” (mechanical) sounds not considered meaningful.

The Canadian physicist Hugh Le Caine was crucial experiments in the velocity of a keyboard 1945-1948. In the invented him Sackbut could allow the player even by changing the lateral pressure of the key subtle changes in pitch, loudness and timbre, plus expressive features such as vibrato, intensity and transient control. In 1955 he invented the Special Purpose Tape Recorder, which is a synthesis of multi-channel tape recorder and Mellotron, with which resulted in working with concrete sounds unimagined possibilities.  in 1955, composed by Le Caine piece Dripsody is only just over a minute long and is made with the recorder captured the sound of a water droplet, which was widely copied and arranged at different speeds in a pentatonic scale, yielding different pitches were. Starting with the original drops, increase the intensity and density by more tape loops to a climax, to twelve-note arpeggios, which are all derived from the sound material of the drop.
Computer Music

Main article → Computer Music

Lejaren Hiller founded the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1958, the second American studio for electronic music, Experimental Music Studio. He experimented with other researchers there, next to the ILLIAC computer and later the IBM 7090 computer

Besides the use of technical equipment in studio can now three great musical applications of computer account, the composition with the key words (Score synthesis), sound generation (by simulation) and sound control are outlined.

At the “Grand Price of Ars Electronica” was presented in 1979 by Kim Ryrie and Peter Vogel developed in Australia Fairlight music computer for the first time a wider international audience. This complex (8-bit) computing machine produced a significant improvement, the sampling method is that it allowed for the first time all the sounds of our world into a computer to save both them using the keyboard at any time to retrieve not only easily, but they are on bring any desired pitch and to be able to do besides malleable.

This opened up completely new musical composers and producers and conceptual dimensions. In January 1982, for example, appeared on a special for this kind of music in Hamburg, founded by Ulrich Rützel label and publishing the album “Acoustic Sound Symphony Erdenklang computer”. It was the first available record with this new production technology. In her liner notes to this album noted Wendy Carlos: “Earth may sound not only more than technical, but must be seen largely as a musical achievement. Something, what the electronic music, since they are fighting it. ”

Hubert Bognermayr and Ulrich Rützel introduced in this music genre, the term computer-acoustic music. Published in 1983, “Sermon on the Mount – Oratorio for computer music and voices” solidified this music historical development and is still a milestone in computer music dar.

When on 25 April 1987 the WDR concert organized the “Million Bits In Concert” with the electronic musicians Hubert Bognermayr, Harald Zuschrader, John Schmoelling, Kristian Schultze and Matthias Thurow came first several computer systems (such as the Fairlight) in a live concert to use . Mike Oldfield was inspired by Bognermayr Zuschrader and introduce this technology and went with the Fairlight and Harald Zuschrader on tour.

Chance of computer music is now also used for technically-driven theater and open-air productions, for example, when switching musical fireworks.