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. The
exhibition was presented as part of Ars Electronica 1992, in Linz, Austria
and 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 by
relegating them to the past and permitting the simple
passage of time to substitute for development, the suspicion
is 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 electronic
television should follow to the past decade of electronic
music."Nam June Paik (1965)
Introduction:
Historical facts reinforce the obvious realization thatthe major cultural impetus which spawned video image
experimentation was the American Sixties. As a response tothat cultural climate, it was more a perceptual movement
than an artistic one in the sense that its practitioners
desired an electronic equivalent to the sensory andphysiological tremendum which came to life during theVietnam War. Principal among these was the psychedelic
experience with its radical experiential assault on thenature of perception and visual phenomena. Armed with a new
visualontology,
whateverart
image-making
tradition
informed them it was less a cinematic one than an overt
counter-cultural reaction to television as a mainstream
institution and purveyor of images that were deemed
politicallyfalse.
The
violenceoftechnology
that
television personified, both metaphorically and literally
through the war images it disseminated, represented a source
for renewal in the electronic reconstruction of archaic
perception.
It is specifically a concern for the expansion of humanperception through a technological stratagem that links
thosetumultuous
yearsofaesthetic
andtechnical

experimentation with the 20th century history of modernist
exploration of electronic potentials, primarily exemplified
by the lineage of artistic research initiated by electronic
sound and music experimentation beginning as far back as1906 with the invention of the Telharmonium. This essay
traces some of that early history and its implications forour current historical predicament. The other essential
argument 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 artistic
exploration and use of technology throughout the 20th
century.
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-making
and electroacoustic aesthetics as antecedent to the more
relevant discussion of the emergence of electronic image
generation/processing tools and aesthetics. Our intention is
to frame this image-making tradition within the realizationthat many of its concerns were first articulated within an
audio technology domain and that they repeat, within thehigher frequency spectrum of visual information, similar
issues encountered within the electronic music/sound art
traditions. In fact, it can be argued that many of theinnovators within this period of electronic image-making
evolved directly from participation in the electronic musicexperimentation of that time period.
Since the exhibition itself attempts to depict these
individuals and their art through the perspective of theactual means of production, as exemplified by the generative
tools, it must be pointed out that the physical objects on
display are not to be regarded as aesthetic objects per se
but rather as instruments which facilitate the articulationof both aesthetic products and ideological viewpoints. It is
predominantly 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 an
historical 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 issues
which reinforce a systemic process view of a complex set of
dialectics(e.g.
modernist
versusrepresentationist
aesthetics, and artistic versus industrial/technocratic
ideologies).

Early Pioneers:
One of the persistent realities of history is that thefacts which we inherit as descriptions of historical events
are not neutral. They are invested with the biases ofindividual and/or group participants, those who havesurvived or, more significantly, those who have acquired
sufficient power to control how that history is written. In
attempting to compile this chronology, it has been myintention to present a story whose major signposts include
those who have made substantive contributions but remain
uncelebrated in addition to those figures who have merely
become famous for being famous. The reader should bear inmind that this is a brief chronology that must of necessity
neglect other events and individuals whose work was just as
valid. 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 which
actually embraces such technology in most other facets of
its deepest fabric. It appears to abhor that which mirrors
its fundamental workings and yet offers an alternative toits own violence. In view of this suspicion I have chosen to
write this chronology from a position that regards theartistic acquisition of technology as one of the few arenas
where a creative critique of the so-called technological era
has been possible.
One of the earliest documented musical instruments
based upon electronic principles was the Clavecin Électriquedesigned by the jesuit priest Jean-Baptiste Delaborde inFrance, 1759. The device used a keyboard control based upon
simple electrostatic principles.
The spirit of invention which immediately preceded theturn of this century was synchronous with a cultural
enthusiasm
about
the
new
technologies
thatwasunprecedented. Individuals such as Bell, Edison, and Tesla
became culture heroes who ushered in an ideology ofindustrial progress founded upon the power of harnessed
electricity.
Amongstthisassemblageofinventorindustrialists was Dr. Thaddeus Cahill, inventor of theelectric typewriter, designer and builder of the firstmusicalsynthesizer
and,bydefault,
originatorofindustrial muzak. While a few attempts to build electronic
musical instruments were made in the late 19th century by
Elisha 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 a
viable electronic musical instrument ever conceived.
Working against incredible technical difficulties,
Cahill succeeded in 1900 to construct the first prototype of
the Telharmonium and by 1906, a fairly complete realizationof his vision. This electro-mechanical device consisted of
145 rheotome/alternators capable of producing five octavesof variable harmonic content in imitation of orchestral tone
colors. Its principal of operation consisted of what we now
refer 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 10,000
watts. As a result the instrument was quite immense,
weighing approximately 200 tons. When it was shipped from
Holyoke, Massachusetts to New York City, over thirty
railroad flatcars were enlisted in the effort.
While Cahill's initial intention was simply to realize
a truly sophisticated electronic instrument that could
perform traditional repertoire, he quickly pursued its
industrial 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 legal
difficulties, ceasing operations in 1911.
The Telharmonium and its inventor represent one of themost spectacular examples of one side of a recurrent
dialectic
which
we
will
see
demonstrated
repeatedly
throughout the 20th century history of the artistic use ofelectronic technology. Cahill personifies the industrial
ideologyofinvention
which
seeks
to
imitatemore
efficiently the status quo. Such an ideology desires tosummarize existent knowledge through a new technology andthereby provide a marketable representation of current
reality. In contrast to this view, the modernist ideology
evolvedtoassertananti-representationist
useof
technology which sought to expand human perception throughthe acquisition of new technical means. It desired to seek
the unknown as new phenomenological and experiential
understandings 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 of
the age we live in...Dada was not a school of artists, but
an 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 instruments
then consisted. Their interest was not to use the emerging
electronic potential to imitate existent forms, but rather
to go beyond what was already known. In the same year that
Cahill finalized the Telharmonium and moved it to New York
City, the composer Ferruccio Busoni wrote his Entwurf einer
neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst (Sketch of a New Aesthetic ofMusic) wherein he proposed the necessity for an expansion ofthechromatic
scale
and
new
(possibly
electrical)
instruments to realize it. Many composers embraced this idea
and began to conceptualize what such a music should consist
of. In the following year, the Australian composer Percy
Grainger was already convinced that his concept of Free
Music could only be realized through use of electromechanical devices. By 1908 the Futurist Manifesto was
published and the modernist ideology began its artists'
revolt against existent social and cultural values. In 1913
Luigi Russolo wrote The Art of Noise, declaring that the"evolution of music is paralleled by the multiplication of
the machine". By the end of that year, Russolo and Ugo
Piatti 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 of
the noise of modern life. His noise intoning devices
presented their array of "howlers, boomers, cracklers,
scrapers, exploders, buzzers, gurglers, and whistles" tobewildered audiences in Italy, London, and finally Paris in
1921, 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 there
was an unprecedented amount of experimental music activity
much of which involved discourse about the necessity for newinstrumental resources capable of realizing the emerging
theories which rejected traditional compositional processes.
Composers such as Ives, Satie, Cowell, Varèse, andSchoenberg were advancing the structural and instrumental
resources for music. It was into this intellectual climate,and into the cultural changes brought on by the Russian
Revolution, that Leon Theremin (Lev Sergeyevich Termen)
introduced the Aetherophone (later known as the Theremin), a
newelectronic
instrument
basedonradio-frequency
oscillations controlled by hands moving in space over two
antennae. The extraordinary flexibility of the instrument
not only allowed for the performance of traditional
repertoire but also a wide range of new effects. The
theatricality of its playing technique and the uniqueness of
its 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 of
the earliest television devices, and moved to New York City.
There he gave concerts with Leopold Stokowski, entertained
Albert Einstein and married a black dancer named Lavinia
Williams. In 1932 he collaborated with the electronic image
pioneer Mary Ellen Bute to display mathematical formulas on
a CRT synchronized to music. He also continued to invent new
instruments such as the Rhythmicon, a complex cross-rhythm
instrument produced in collaboration with Henry Cowell. Uponhis return to the Soviet Union in 1938, Theremin was placed
under house arrest and directed to work for the state oncommunications and surveillance technologies until his
retirement in the late 1960's.
In many ways, Leon Theremin represents an archetypal
example of the artist/engineer whose brilliant initialcareer is coopted by industry or government. In his case theirony is particularly poignant in that he invented his
instruments in the full flowering of the Bolshevik
enthusiasm
forprogressive
culture
under
Lenin
and
subsequently 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
and
surveillance technologies that had been obsolete for years.
This
suppressionofinnovation
throughinstitutional
ambivalence, censorship or cooptation is also one of therecurrent patterns of the artistic use of technology
throughout the 20th century. What often begins with thedesire to expand human perception ends with commoditization
or direct repression.

By the end of the 1920's a large assortment of newelectronic musical instruments had been developed. In
Germany Jörg Mager had been experimenting with the design of
new electronic instruments. The most successful was the
Sphärophon, a radio frequency oscillator based keyboard
instrument capable of producing quarter-tone divisions of
the 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 were
written for the instrument by Milhaud, Honegger, Jolivet,
Varèse and eventually Messiaen who wrote Fête des Belles
Eaux 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 technology
as the Theremin and Sphärophon but introduced a much moresophisticated and flexible control strategy.
Other new instruments introduced around this time were
the Dynaphone of Rene Bertrand, the Hellertion of Bruno
Helberger 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 oscillators
constructed with over 700 vacuum tubes. One of the longest
lived of this generation of electronic instruments was theTrautonium of Dr. Friedrich Trautwein. This keyboard
instrument was based upon distinctly different technology
than the principles previously mentioned. It was one of thefirst instruments to use a neon-tube oscillator and its
unique
sound
could
be
selectively
filtered
duringperformance. Its resonance filters could emphasize specificovertone
regions.
The
instrument
wasdevelopedin
conjunction with the Hochschule für Music in Berlin where a
research
programforcompositional
manipulationofphonograph recordings had been founded two years earlier in
1928. 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. Other
composers who wrote for the Trautonium included Richard
Strauss and Werner Egk. The greatest virtuoso of this
instrument was the composer Oskar Sala who performed on it,
and made technical improvements, into the 1960's. Also about
this time, the composer Robert Beyer published a curious
paper 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 manipulation
constitute one of the first attempts at organizing soundelectronically that was not based upon an instrumental
model. 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 of
the main approaches to electronic composition to become
dominant 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 synthetic
sound 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 experimented
at the Scientific Experimental Film Institute in Leningrad
while E.A Scholpo and G.M. Rimski-Korsakov performed similar
research at the Leningrad Conservatory. In the same year,
Bauhaus artists performed experiments with hand-drawn
waveforms converted into sound through photoelectric cells.
Two other German artists, Rudolph Pfenninger and Oscar
Fischinger worked separately at about this time exploringsynthetic sound generation through techniques that weresimilar to Voinov and Avzaanov.
A dramatic increase in new electronic instruments soon
appeared in subsequent years. All of them seem to have had
fascinating if not outrightly absurd names: the Sonorous
Cross; 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
intendedtoreplicatefamiliar
instrumental sounds of the pipe organ variety. It isprecisely this desire to replicate the familiar which
spawned the other major tradition of electronic instrument
design: the large families of electric organs and pianos
that 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 were
rejected by pipe organ enthusiasts because its additive
synthesis 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.
Hammondalso
patentedareverberation technique that is still widely used.

spring

The Warbo Formant Organ (1937) was one of the first
truly polyphonic electronic instruments that could beconsidered a predecessor of current electronic organs. Its
designer the German engineer Harald Bode was one of thecentral figures in the history of electronic music in both
Europe and the United States. Not only did he contribute to
instrument design from the 1930's on, he was one of the
primary engineers in establishing the classic tape musicstudios in Europe. His contributions straddled the two major
design traditions of new sounds versus imitation of
traditional ones without much bias since he was primarily anengineer interested in providing tools for a wide range ofmusicians. Other instruments which he subsequently built
included the Melodium, the Melochord and the Polychord(Bode's other contributions will be discussed later in thisessay).
Bythe
late
1930'sthere
wasanincreaseofexperimental activity in both Europe and the United States.
1938 saw the installation of the ANS Synthesizer at the
Moscow Experimental Music Studio. John Cage began his long
fascination with electronic sound sources in 1939 with thepresentationofImaginaryLandscape
No.
1,
a
live
performance work whose score includes a part for discrecordings performed on a variable speed phonograph. A
number of similar works utilizing recorded sound andelectronic sound sources followed. Cage had also been oneof the most active proselytizers for electronic music
through his writings, as were Edgard Varèse, Joseph
Schillinger, Leopold Stokowski, Henry Cowell, Carlos Chavez
and Percy Grainger. It was during the 1930's that Grainger
seriously began to pursue the building of technologicaltools capable of realizing his radical concept of Free Music
notated 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 controlled
by a paper tape roll mechanism. These instruments saw a
number of incarnations until Grainger's death in 1961.
In 1939 Homer Dudley created the voder and the vocoderfor
non-musicalapplications
associatedwithspeechanalysis. The voder was a keyboard-operated encoding
instrument
consistingof
bandpasschannelsforthesimulation of resonances in the human voice. It also
contained 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 of
the 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's
included the first successful television transmission andmajor innovations in audio recording. Since the turn of the
century, research into improving upon the magnetic wire
recorder, invented by Valdemar Poulsen, had steadily
progressed. A variety of improvements had been made, mostnotably the use of electrical amplification and theinvention of the Alternating Current bias technique. The
next 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. The
German 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 plastic
recording tape in 1932. The most successful of the earlymagnetic
recordingdeviceswasundoubtedly
the
AEG
Magnetophone 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 paper
tape. After World War II the patents for this technology
were 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 was
obviously drastic. Most experimental creative activity
ceased and technical innovation was almost exclusively
dominated by military needs. European music was the mostseriously effected with electronic music research remaining
dormant until the late 1940's. However, with magnetic taperecording technology now a reality, a new period of rapid
innovation took place. At the center of this new activity
was the ascendancy of the tape music studio as bothcompositional tool and research institution. Tape recording
revolutionized electronic music more than any other single
event 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 instrument
designers, 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, Pierre
Schaeffer had begun his experiments with manipulation ofphonograph recordings and quickly evolved a theoretical
position 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 onto
disc and later tape. These "sound objects" were thenmanipulated as pieces of sound that could be spliced into
new 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. In
1948 Schaeffer was joined by the engineer Jacques Poullin
who 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 Pierre
Henry then joined Schaeffer and Poullin in 1949. Together
they constructed the Symphonie pour un homme seul, one of
the true classics of early tape music completed before they
had access to tape recorders.
By 1950 Schaeffer and Henry were working with magnetic
tape 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 following
year, French National Radio installed a sophisticated studiofor the Group for Research on Musique Concrète. Over the
next few years significant composers began to be attracted
to the studio including Pierre Boulez, Michel Philippot,
Jean Barraqué, Phillipe Arthuys, Edgard Varèse, and Olivier
Messiaen. In 1954 Varèse composed the tape part to Déserts
for orchestra and tape at the studio and the work saw its
infamous premiere in December of that year.
Since Musique Concrète was both a musical and aesthetic
research project a variety of theoretical writings emerged
toarticulatethemovement's
progress.
Of
principal
importance was Schaeffer's book A la recherche d'une musiqueconcrète. In it he describes the group's experiments in a
pseudo-scientific manner that forms a lexicon of sounds andtheir distinctive characteristics which should determine
compositional criteria and organization. In collaboration
with A. Moles, Schaeffer specified a classification system
for acoustical material according to orders of magnitude andother criteria. In many ways these efforts set the direction
for the positivist philosophical bias that has dominated the"research" emphasis ofFrance and elsewhere.

electronic

music

institutionsin

The sonic and musical characteristics of early musiqueconcrète were pejoratively described by Olivier Messiaen as
containing a high level of surrealistic agony and literary
descriptivism. The movement's evolution saw most of theparticipating composers including Schaeffer move away fromthe extreme dislocations of sound and distortion associated
with
its
early
compositions
andsimpletechniques.
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 a
traditional one, traditionally absurd: spirit is opposed tomatter,poetrytotechnique,progresstotradition,individual to the group and how much else. From all this it
takes just one more step to conclude that the world isabsurd, full of unbearable contradictions. Thus a violent
desire 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 its
additional 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. I
have the right to justify my demand, and the duty to lead
possible 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 it
form.
... 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 is
not denied; any more than the theatre is supplanted by thecinema. Something new is added: a new art of sound. Am I
wrong 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. As
recording technology began to reveal itself to composers,
many
of
whom
had
been
anxiously
awaitingsuchabreakthrough, some composers began to work under theauspices of broadcast radio stations and recording studios
with professional tape recorders and test equipment in off
hours. Others began to scrounge and share equipment wherever
possible, forming informal cooperatives based upon available
technology. 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 live
performance works for instruments, tape recorders andelectronic oscillators. In the United States, Bebe and Louis
Barron began their pioneering experiments with tape collage.
As early as 1948 the Canadian composer/engineer Hugh Le
Caine was hired by the National Research Council of Canada
to begin building electronic musical instruments.
In parallel to all of these events, another major
lineage of tape studio activity began to emerge in Germany.
According to the German physicist Werner Meyer-Eppler the
events comprising the German electronic music history during
this time are as follows. In 1948 the inventor of the
Vocoder, Homer Dudley, demonstrated for Meyer-Eppler his
device. Meyer-Eppler subsequently used a tape recording of
the Vocoder to illustrate a lecture he gave in 1949 called
Developmental Possibilities of Sound. In the audience wasthe aforementioned Robert Beyer, now employed at theNorthwest German Radio, Cologne. Beyer must have been
profoundly impressed by the presentation since it was
decided that lectures should be formulated on the topic of"electronic music" for the International Summer School for
New Music in Darmstadt the following year. Much of thesubsequent lecture by Meyer-Eppler contained material fromhis classic book, Electronic Tone Generation, Electronic
Music, and Synthetic Speech.
By 1951 Meyer-Eppler began a series of experiments withsynthetically generated sounds using Harald Bode's Melochord
and an AEG magnetic tape recorder. Together with Robert
Beyer and Herbert Eimert, Meyer-Eppler presented his
research as a radio program called "The World of Sound of
Electronic Music" over German Radio, Cologne. This broadcast
helped to convince officials and technicians of the Cologne
radio
stationtosponsoranofficial
studiofor
Elektronischen Musik. From its beginning the Cologne studiodifferentiated itself from the Musique Concrète activities
in Paris by limiting itself to "pure" electronic soundsources
that
could
be
manipulated
through
precisecompositional techniques derived from Serialism.
theWhile one of the earliest compositional outcomes frominfluenceofMeyer-Eppler
was
Bruno
Maderna's

collaboration with him entitled Musica su due Dimensioni forflute, percussion, and loudspeaker, most of the other works
that followed were strictly concerned with utilizing only
electronic sounds such as pure sine-waves. One of the firstattempts at creating this labor intensive form of studio
based additive synthesis was Karlheinz Stockhausen who
created his Étude out of pure sine-waves at the Paris studioin 1952. Similar works were produced at the Cologne
facilities by Beyer and Eimert at about this time andsubsequently followed by the more sophisticated attempts by
Stockhausen, Studie I (1953) and Studie II (1954). In 1954 apublic concert was presented by Cologne radio that included
works by Stockhausen, Goeyvaerts, Pousseur, Gredinger, andEimert. Soon other composers began working at the Cologne
studio including Koenig, Heiss, Klebe, Kagel, Ligeti, Brün
and Ernst Krenek. The later composer completed his SpiritusIntelligentiae Sanctus at the Cologne studio in 1956. This
work along with Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge, composedat the same time, signify the end of the short-lived pure
electronic emphasis claimed by the Cologne school. Bothworks used electronically generated sounds in combination
with 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 tend
to view this distinction more in terms of a reorganization
at mid-century of the representationist versus modernist
dialectic which appeared in prior decades. Even though
Schaeffer and his colleagues were consciously aligned inovert ways with the Futurists' concern with noise, theytended to rely on dramatic expression that was dependent
upon illusionistic associations to the sounds undergoing
deconstruction. 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 of
the material as a new perceptual resource. Obviously thetechnical limitations of the studio at that time, in
addition to the aesthetic demands imposed by the current
issues of musicality, made their initial pursuit too
problematic.
Concurrent with the tape studio developments in Franceand Germany there were significant advances occurring in the
United States. While there was not yet any significant
institutional support for the experimental work being
pursued 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. Since
the group had no permanent facility, they relied on borrowed
time in commercial sound studios such as that maintained by
Bebe and Louis Barron or used borrowed equipment that they
could share. The most important work to have emerged fromthis collective was Cage's William's Mix. The composition
used hundreds of prerecorded sounds from the Barron's
library as the source from which to fulfill the demands of a
meticulously notated score that specified not only thecategories of sounds to be used at any particular time but
also 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 may
not 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 compositional
and 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 almost
complete isolation from the other experimenters in Europe
and the United States, Ussachevsky began to explore tape
manipulation of electronic and instrumental sounds with very
limited 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 Henry
Cowell in Woodstock, New York: Fantasy in Space, Low Speed,
and Sonic Contours. The works, after completion in
Ussachevsky's living room in New York and in the basement
studio of Arturo Toscanini's Riverdale home, were presented
at the Museum of Modern Art in October of 1952.
Throughout the 1950's important work in electronic
music experimentation only accelerated at a rapid pace. In
1953 an Italian electronic music studio (Studio deFonologia) was established at the Radio Audizioni Italianein Milan. During its early years the studio attracted many
important international figures including Luciano Berio,
Niccolo Castiglioni, Aldo Clementi, Bruno Maderna, Luigi
Nono, John Cage, Henri Pousseur, André Boucourechliev, andBengt Hambraeus. Studios were also established at thePhilips research labs in Eindhoven and at NHK (Japanese
Broadcasting System) in 1955. In that same year the David
Sarnoff Laboratories of RCA in Princeton, New Jersey
introduced 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 instrumental
timbres 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 system
consisting of a punched paper roll or tab-card programming
scheme, it was an extremely sophisticated instrument for its
time. Not only could a composer generate, combine and filter
sounds from the machine's tuning-fork oscillators and whitenoise generators, sounds could be input from a microphone
for modification. Ultimately the device's design philosophy
favored fairly classical concepts of musical structure suchas precise control of twelve-tone pitch material and wastherefore favored by composers working within the serial
genre.
The first composers to work with the Olson-Belar Sound
Synthesizer (later known as the RCA Music Synthesizer) were
Vladimir Ussachevsky, Otto Luening and Milton Babbitt who
managed to initially gain access to it at the RCA Labs.
Within a few years this trio of composers in addition to
Roger Sessions managed to acquire the device on a permanent
basis
for
the
newly
established
Columbia-Princeton
Electronic Music Center in New York City. Because of its
advancedfacilities
andpolicyofencouragementtocontemporary composers, the center attracted a large numberof international figures such as Alice Shields, Pril Smiley,
Michiko Toyama, Bülent Arel, Mario Davidovsky, Halim ElDabh, Mel Powell, Jacob Druckman, Charles Wourinen, andEdgard Varèse.
In 1958 the University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana
established the Studio for Experimental Music. Under the
initial direction of Lejaren Hiller the studio became one of
the most important centers for electronic music research in
the United States. Two years earlier, Hiller, who was also a
professional chemist, applied his scientific knowledge ofdigital computers to the composition of the Illiac Suite for
String Quartet, one of the first attempts at serious
computer-aided musical composition. In subsequent years theresident faculty connected with the Studio for Experimental
Music included composers Herbert Brün, Kenneth Gaburo, andSalvatore Martirano along with the engineer James Beauchamp
whose Harmonic Tone Generator was one of the mostinteresting special sound generating instruments of theperiod.

By the end of the decade Pierre Schaeffer had
reorganized 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 classic
composition 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 and
expressive
works
which
explored
a
wide
range
of
compositional styles. More and more works began to appear by
the mid-1950's which addressed the concept of combining
taped 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 extremely
broad, much of the work in the various tape studios was anextension of the Serialism which dominated instrumental
music. By the end of the decade new structural concepts
began to emerge from working with the new electronic soundsources that influenced instrumental music. This expansionof timbral and organizational resources brought strict
serialism 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 be
exhaustive 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's
Mix; 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:
Evolutionen

Diamorphoses;

Pousseur:

Scambi;

Badings:

1958) Varèse: Poème électronique; Ligeti: Artikulation;
Kagel: Transición I; Cage: Fontana Mix; Berio: Thema-Omaggio a Joyce; Xenakis: Concret P-H II; Pousseur: Rimes
Pour Différentes Sources Sonores
1959) Kagel: Transición II; Cage: Indeterminacy1960) Berio: Differences; Gerhard: Collages; Maxfield: Night
Music; Ashley: The Fourth of July; Takemitsu: Water Music;
Xenakis: Orient-Occident III
By 1960 the evolution of the tape studio wasprogressing dramatically. In Europe the institutional
support 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 was
problematicforcertaincomposers
who
resistedtheinstitutional 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 using
electronics found that the tape medium was unsuited to theirideas. John Cage, for instance, came to reject the wholeaesthetic that accompanied tape composition as incompatible
with his philosophy of indeterminacy and live performance.
Some composers began to seek out other technical solutions
in order to specify more precise compositional control than
the tape studio could provide them. It was into this climateof shifting needs that a variety of new electronic devices
emerged.
The coming of the 1960's saw a gradual cultural
revolution
which
was co-synchronouswithadistinct
acceleration of new media technologies. While the invention

of the transistor in 1948 at Bell Laboratories had begun to
impact electronic manufacturing, it was during the early
1960's that major advances in electronic design took shape.
The subsequent innovations and their impact upon electronic
music were multifold and any understanding of them must be
couched 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 categories
under
discussion
were
never
exclusive
but
in
fact
interpenetrated freely in the compositional and performancestyles of musicians. It is also necessary to point out thatany characterization of one form of technical means as
superior to another (i.e. computers versus synthesizers) is
not intentional. It is the author's contention that the very
nature of the symbiosis between machine and artist is suchthat each instrument, studio facility, or computer program
yields its own working method and unique artistic produce.
Preferences between technological resources emerge from amatch between a certain machine and the imaginative intent
of an artist, and not from qualities that are hierarchically
germane to the history of technological innovation. Claims
for technological efficiency may be relevant to a very
limited context but are ultimately absurd when viewed from a
broader 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 electronic
instruments, and since they do not "synthesize" othersounds, the term is more the result of a conceptual
confusion emanating from industrial nonsense about how these
instruments "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-controlled
synthesizer
isacollectionofwaveformandnoise
generators, modifiers (such as filters, ring modulators,
amplifiers), mixers and control devices packaged in modular
or integrated form. The generators produce an electronic
signal which can be patched through the modifiers and into amixer or amplifier where it is made audible throughloudspeakers. This sequence of interconnections constitutes
a 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 control
voltages. These control voltage sources can be a keyboard, aribbon controller, a random voltage source, an envelope
generator or any other compatible voltage source.
The story of the analog "synthesizer" has no single
beginning. In fact, its genesis is an excellent example of
how a good idea often emerges simultaneously in different
geographic locations to fulfill a generalized need. In thiscase the need was to consolidate the various electronic
sound generators, modifiers and control devices distributedin fairly bulky form throughout the classic tape studio. The
reason for doing this was quite straightforward: to provide
a personal electronic system to individual composers thatwas specifically designed for music composition and/or live
performance, and which had the approximate technicalcapability of the classic tape studio at a lower cost. The
geographic 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 to
be designed in the early 1960's and consisted of a ring
modulator, envelope follower, tone-burst-responsive envelope
generator, voltage-controlled amplifier, filters, mixers,
pitch extractor, comparator and frequency divider, and atape loop repeater. This device may have had some indirect
influence on Robert Moog but the idea for his modular
synthesizer 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 1964
the composer Herbert Deutsch was using one of these
instruments 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 first
prototype of a modular electronic music synthesizer laterthat year. By 1966 the first production model was available
from the new company he had formed to produce this
instrument. The first systems which Moog produced wereprincipally designed for studio applications and weregenerally large modular assemblages that contained voltagecontrolled
oscillators,
filters,
voltage-controlled
amplifiers, envelope generators, and a traditional style
keyboard
forvoltage-control
of
the
other
modules.

Interconnection between the modules was achieved throughpatch cords. By 1969 Moog saw the necessity for a smaller
portable instrument and began to manufacture the Mini Moog,
a concise version of the studio system that contained an
oscillator bank, filter, mixer, VCA and keyboard. As an
instrument designer Moog was always a practical engineer.
His basically commercial but egalitarian philosophy is best
exemplified
by
some
of
the
advertising
copy
which
accompanied the Mini Moog in 1969 and resulted in its
becoming the most widely used synthesizer in the "musicindustry":"R.A. Moog, Inc. built its first synthesizer components in
1964. At that time, the electronic music synthesizer was acumbersome laboratory curiosity, virtually unknown to thelistening public. Today, the Moog synthesizer has proven its
indispensability through its widespread acceptance. Moog
synthesizers are in use in hundreds of studios maintained byuniversities, recording companies, and private composers
throughout the world. Dozens of successful recordings, film
scores, and concert pieces have been realized on Moog
synthesizers. The basic synthesizer concept as developed by
R.A. Moog, Inc., as well as a large number of technologicalinnovations, have literally revolutionized the contemporary
musical scene, and have been instrumental in bringing
electronic 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 a
performance synthesizer. Many prototypes were built over the
past two years, and tried out by musicians in actual liveperformance situations. Mini Moog circuitry is a combinationof our time-proven and reliable designs with the latest
developments 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 university
instruction, to the demands of commercial music as much as
to the needs of the experimental avant garde. The Mini Moog
offersatruly
uniquecombinationofversatility,
playability, convenience, and reliability at an eminently
reasonable price."
In contrast to Moog's industrial stance, the rather
counter-cultural design philosophy of Donald Buchla and his
voltage-controlled synthesizers can partially be attributed
to the geographic locale and cultural circumstances of theirgenesis. In 1961 San Francisco was beginning to emerge as amajor cultural center with several vanguard composers
organizing concerts and other performance events. Morton
Subotnick was starting his career in electronic musicexperimentation, as were Pauline Oliveros, Ramon Sender andTerry Riley. A primitive studio had been started at the San
Francisco Conservatory of Music by Sender where he andOliveros had begun a series of experimental music concerts.
In 1962 this equipment and other resources from electronic
surplus sources were pooled together by Sender and Subotnick
to form the San Francisco Tape Music Center which was later
moved to Mills College in 1966. Because of the severe
limitations of the equipment, Subotnick and Sender sought
out 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 design
but subsequently convinced them that this was the wrong
approach 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. The
idea was to design it so that it was like an analog
computer. It was not a musical instrument but it was
modular...It was a collection of modules of voltagecontrolled envelope generators and it had sequencers in it
right off the bat...It was a collection of modules that you
would put together. There were no two systems the same until
CBS bought it...Our goal was that it should be under $400
for the entire instrument and we came very close. That's why
the original 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 emphasized
new timbral possibilities. He stressed the complexity that
could arise out of randomness and was intrigued with thedesign of new control devices other than the standard
keyboard. He summarizes his philosophy and distinguishes itfrom Moog's in the following statement:"I would say that philosophically the prime difference in
our 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 one
purpose. There were several drawbacks to that kind ofgeneral approach, one of them being that a module designed
to 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 big
difference in the structural domain, whereas harmonic
distortion makes very little difference in the control area
but it can be very significant in the audio areas. You also
have a matter of just being able to discern what's happening
in a system by looking at it. If you have a very complex
patch, 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 whether
you deal with linear versus exponential functions at thecontrol level and that was a very inhibiting factor in
Moog's more general approach.
Uncertainty is the basis for a lot of my work. One always
operates 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. The
predictabilities 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 you
could randomize the rate of change. In this way you could
make patterns that were of more interest than patterns thatare totally random."
While the early Buchla instruments contained many of
the same modular functions as the Moog, it also contained anumber of unique devices such as its random control voltage
sources, sequencers and voltage-controlled spatial panners.
Buchla has maintained his unique design philosophy over theintervening years producing a series of highly advanced
instruments often incorporating hybrid digital circuitry andunique control interfaces.
The other major voltage-controlled synthesizers toarise at this time (1964) were the Synket, a highly portable
instrument built by Paul Ketoff, and a unique machine
designed by Tony Furse in Australia. According to composer
Joel Chadabe, the Synket resulted from discussions between
himself, Otto Luening and John Eaton while these composers
were in residence in Rome. Chadabe had recently inspected
the developmental work of Robert Moog and conveyed this to
Eaton and Luening. The engineer Paul Ketoff was enlisted tobuild a performance oriented instrument for Eaton who
subsequently became the virtuoso on this small synthesizer,
using it extensively in subsequent years. The machine built
by Furse was the initial foray into electronic instrument

design by this brilliant Australian engineer. He later
became the principal figure in the design of some of theearliest and most sophisticated digital synthesizers of the
1970's.
After these initial efforts, a number of other American
designers and manufacturers followed the lead of Buchla andMoog. One of the most successful was the Arp Synthesizer
built by Tonus, Inc. with design innovations by the team of
Dennis Colin and David Friend. The studio version of the Arp
was introduced in 1970 and basically imitated modular
features of the Moog and Buchla instruments. A year later
they 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 ElectroComp, a small synthesizer oriented to the educational
market;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 systems
designed and manufactured by Serge Tcherepnin and referred
to as Serge Modular Music Systems.
In Europe the major manufacturer was undoubtedly EMS, a
British company founded by its chief designer Peter
Zinovieff. EMS built the Synthi 100, a large integrated
system which introduced a matrix-pinboard patching system,
and a small portable synthesizer based on similar designprinciples initially called the Putney but later modified
into the Synthi A or Portabella. This later instrument
became 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 problematic
relationship that many of the designers have had withcommercialization
andthesubsequent
solutionofmanufacturing problems. While the commercial potential forthese instruments became evident very early on in the
1960'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 larger
corporate 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 a
distinctly 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 estimated
5,140 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 devices
were certainly also used extensively. Most of these works
were tape compositions that used the synthesizer as
resource. 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:
Apocalypse

Visage;Dockstader:

Two

Fragments

From1962) Xenakis: Bohor I; Philippot: Étude III; Parmegiani:
Danse
1963)
Bayle:
Portraits
Nordheim: Epitaffio

del'Oiseau-Qui-N'existe-Pas;

1964) Babbitt: Ensembles for Synthesizer; Brün: Futility;
Nono: La Fabbrica Illuminata
1965) Gaburo: Lemon
Synchronisms No. 3

Drops;

Mimaroglu:

Agony;Davidovsky:1966) Oliveros: I of IV; Druckman: Animus I
1967) Subotnick: Silver Apples of the Moon; Eaton: Concert
Piece for Syn-Ket and Symphony Orchestra; Koenig: Terminus
X; Smiley: Eclipse
1968) Carlos: Switched-On Bach; Gaburo:Nono: Contrappunto dialettico alla mente

Dante's

Joynte;1969) Wourinen: Time's Encomium; Ferrari: Music Promenade1970) Arel: Stereo Electronic Music No. 2; Lucier: I am
sitting in a room2) Computer MusicA distinction: Analog refers to systems where aphysical quantity is represented by an analogous physicalquantity. The traditional audio recording chain demonstrates
this quite well since each stage of translation throughout
constitutes a physical system that is analogous to theprevious one in the chain. The fluctuations of air molecules
which constitute sound are translated into fluctuations ofelectrons by a microphone diaphragm. These electrons arethen converted via a bias current of a tape recorder into
patterns of magnetic particles on a piece of tape. Upon
playback the process can be reversed resulting in thesefluctuations of electrons being amplified into fluctuationsof a loudspeaker cone in space. The final displacement of
air molecules results in an analogous representation of theoriginal sounds that were recorded. Digital refers tosystems where a physical quantity is represented through a
counting process. In digital computers this counting process
consists of a two-digit binary coding of electrical on-off
switching states. In computer music the resultant digitalcode represents the various parameters of sound and its
organization.
As early as 1954, the composer Yannis Xenakis had used
a computer to aid in calculating the velocity trajectories
of glissandi for his orchestral composition Metastasis.
Since hisbackgroundincludedastrongmathematicaleducation, this was a natural development in keeping withhis formal interest in combining mathematics and music. The
search that had begun earlier in the century for new sounds
and 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 an
appropriate 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 early
generation of digital computers and generated the Illiac
Suite for string quartet as a demonstration of this promisein 1956.
Xenakiscontinued
todevelop,
in
a
much
more
sophisticated manner, his unique approach to computerassisted instrumental composition. Between 1956 and 1962 hecomposed a number of works such as Morisma-Amorisma using
thecomputerasamathematicalaid
forfinalizing
calculations 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 idea
in 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 Von
Foerster:"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 problem
appears to get out of hand, that computers come to ourassistance, not merely as ancillary tools but as essential
components in the complex process of generating auditory
signals that fulfill a variety of new principles of ageneralized aesthetics and are not confined to conventional
methods 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 instruments
and 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 primitive
digital to analog converter to demonstrate this possibility
in 1957. Mathews became the central figure at Bell Labs inthe technical evolution of computer generated sound researchand compositional programming with computer over the next
decade. In 1961 he was joined by the composer James Tenney
who had recently graduated from the University of Illinois
where he had worked with Hiller and Gaburo to finish a major
theoretical thesis entitled Meta/Hodos. For Tenney, the BellLab residency was a significant opportunity to apply his
advanced theoretical thinking (involving the application oftheories from Gestalt Psychology to music and soundperception) into the compositional domain. From 1961 to 1964
he completed a series of works which include what areprobably the first serious compositions using the MUSIC IV
program of Max Mathews and Joan Miller and therefore thefirst serious compositions using computer-generated sounds:
Noise Study, Four Stochastic Studies, Dialogue, Stochastic
String 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 Music
Laboratory at the University of Illinois - both employing
familiar, 'concrete' sounds, modified in various ways;
3. a long paper ("Meta/Hodos, A Phenomenology of 20th
Century Music and an Approach to the Study of Form", June,
1961), in which a descriptive terminology and certain
structural principles were developed, borrowing heavily fromGestalt psychology. The central point of the paper involves
the clang, or primary aural Gestalt, and basic laws ofperceptual organization of clangs, clang-elements, andsequences (a high-order Gestalt-unit consisting of several
clangs).
4. A dissatisfaction with all the purely synthetic
electronic music that I had heard up to that time,
particularly with respect to timbre;
5. ideas stemming from my studies of acoustics, electronics
and - especially - information theory, begun in Hiller's
class 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 composition
involved the computer in one way or another;
2. a far better understanding of the physical basis oftimbre, and a sense of having achieved a significant
extension 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 questions
than I could find answers for, and perhaps failed more often
than 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 the
successful reproduction of an instrumental timbre: a trumpet
waveform was recorded and then converted into a numericalrepresentation and when converted back into analog form wasdeemed virtually indistinguishable from its source. This
accomplishment by Mathews, Miller and the French composer
Jean Claude Risset marks the beginning of the recapitulationof the traditional representationist versus modernist
dialectic in the new context of digital computing. Whencontrasted against Tenney's use of the computer to obtain
entirely 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 in
the 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 modernism
has only become more problematic in the intervening years.
The development of computer music has from its
inception been so critically linked to advances in hardware
and software that its practitioners have, until recently,
constituted a distinct class of specialized enthusiasts
within 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 now
takes 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 arduous
tasks associated with programming. The first stage in thisevolution was the design of specific music-oriented programs
such as MUSIC IV. The 1960's saw gradual additions to theselanguages such as MUSIC IVB (a greatly expanded assembly
language 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 Barry
Vercoe). The composer Charles Dodge wrote during this timeabout the intent of these music programs for soundsynthesis:"It is through simulating the operations of an ideal
electronic music studio with an unlimited amount ofequipment that a digital computer synthesizes sound. The
first computer sound synthesis program that was truly
general purpose (i.e., one that could, in theory, produce
any sound) was created at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in
the late 1950's. A composer using such a program must
typically provide: (1) Stored functions which will reside in
the computer's memory representing waveforms to be used by
the unit generators of the program. (2) "Instruments" of his
own
designwhich
logically
interconnect
these
unit
generators. (Unit generators are subprograms that simulate
all the sound generation, modification, and storage devicesof the ideal electronic music studio.) The computer"instruments" play the notes of the composition. (3) Notes
may correspond to the familiar "pitch in time" or,alternatively, may represent some convenient way of dividing
the time continuum."
By the end of the 1960's computer sound synthesis
research saw a large number of new programs in operation at
a 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 composers
had taken the initial steps towards using the computer for
realtime performance by linking the powerful control
functions 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. From
its 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)
thosecomposers
interested
in
using
the
computerpredominantlyasacompositional
devicetogeneratestructural
relationships
that
could
not
be
imaginedotherwise and 2) the use of the computer to generate new
synthetic 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: Mudgett1966) Randall: Lyric Variations1967) Hiller: Cosahedron1968) Brün:
Little Boy

Indefraudibles;

Risset:Computer

Suite

from

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 define
live electronic music as that in which electronic soundgeneration, processing and control predominantly occurs in
realtime 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 live
performance 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 growing
dissatisfaction 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 acoustic
instruments was a major one ever since Maderna, Varèse,
Luening and Ussachevsky first introduced such works in the
1950'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, while
for others it was a specific compositional concern that
dealt
with
the
expansionofstructural
aspectsofperformance in physical space. For instance Mario Davidovsky
andKennethGaburohave
bothwrittenaseriesofcompositions which address the complex contrapuntal dynamics
between live performers and tape: Davidovsky's Synchronisms
1-8 and Gaburo's Antiphonies 1-10. These works demand a wide
variety 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 the
1960'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 the
dynamics 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. The
groups are spatially separated from each other and from the
speakers. 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 interplay
between tape and live bands. The tape band may be divided
into 3 broad compositional classes: (1) quasi-duplication oflive sounds, (2) electro-mechanical transforms of thesebeyond the capabilities of live performers, and (3) movement
into
complementary
acoustic
regionsofsynthesized
electronic sound. Incidentally, I term the union of theseclasses electronics, as distinct from tape content which ispure concrete-mixing or electronic sound synthesis. The live
band encompasses a broad spectrum from normal singing to
vocal
transmission
havingelectronicallyassociatedcharacteristics. 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 within
the tape studio environment was the desire to compose onto
tape using realtime processes that did not requiresubsequent editing. Pauline Oliveros and Richard Maxfield
were early practitioners of innovative techniques thatallowed for live performance in the studio. Oliveros
composed I of IV (1966) in this manner using tape delay andmixer
feedbacksystems.
Other
composers
discovered
synthesizer
patches
that
would
allow
for
autonomous
behaviors to emerge from the complex interactions ofvoltage-control devices. The output from these systems could
be recorded as versions on tape or amplified in live
performance with some performer modification. Entropical
Paradise (1969) by Douglas Leedy is a classic example ofsuch a composition for the Buchla Synthesizer.
The largest and most innovative category of live
electronic 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/or
instruments, in realtime performance. The most simplistic
example of this application extends back to the very firstuse of electronic amplification by the early instruments of
the 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 piano
interior. In 1960 Cage extended this idea to the use ofphonograph cartridges and contact microphones in Cartridge
Music. The work focused upon the intentional amplificationof small sounds revealed through an indeterminate process.
Cage described the aural product: "The sounds which result
are noises, some complex, others extremely simple such as
amplifier 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 movetowardlive
electronic
performancewasanessential
outgrowth of his philosophy of indeterminacy. Cage's
aesthetic position necessitated the theatricality andunpredictability of live performance since he desired acircumstance where individual value judgements would not
intrudeupontherevelation
andperceptionofnewpossibilities.
Into
the1960'shis
fascinationforelectronic sounds in indeterminate circumstances continued
to evolve and become inclusive of an ethical argument for
the appropriateness of artists working with technology as
critics and mirrors of their cultural environment. Cagecomposed a large number of such works during the 1960's,
often enlisting the inspired assistance of like-minded
composer/performers such as David Tudor, Gordon Mumma, David
Behrman, 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. These
works
were
reallyhighlycomplexandindeterminate
happenings that often used a wide range of electronic
techniques and sound sources.
The composer/performer David Tudor was the musician
most 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 the
1960's, performing other composer's live-electronic works
and his own. His most famous composition, Rainforest, andits multifarious performances since it was conceived in
1968, almost constitute a musical sub-culture of electronic
sound research. The work requires the fabrication of special
resonating objects and sculptural constructs which serve as
one-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 more
recent performances the sounds have included a wide
selection of prerecorded materials.
While live electronic music in the 1960's was
predominantly an American genre, activity in Europe andJapan also began to emerge. The foremost European composer
to embrace live electronic techniques in performance was
Karlheinz Stockhausen. By 1964 he was experimenting with thestraightforward electronic filtering of an amplified tam-tam
in Microphonie I. Subsequent works for a variety of
instrumental ensembles and/or voices, such as Prozession or
Stimmung, explored very basic but ingenious use of
amplification, filtering and ring modulation techniques in
realtime
performance.
Inastatementabout
theexperimentation that led to these works, Stockhausen conveys
a clear sense of the spirit of exploration into sound itself
that purveyed much of the live electronic work of the
1960's:"Last summer I made a few experiments by activating the tamtam with the most disparate collection of materials I could
find about the house --glass, metal, wood, rubber, synthetic
materials-- at the same time linking up a hand-held
microphone (highly directional) to an electric filter andconnecting the filter output to an amplifier unit whose
output 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 our
first 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 I
thought 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 what
he heard as the product of our joint activity."
In many ways the evolution of live electronic music
parallels the increasing technological sophistication of its
practitioners. In the early 1960's most of the works within
this genre were concerned with fairly simple realtime
processingof
instrumental
soundsandvoices.
Like
Stockhausen's work from this period this may have been as
basic as the manipulation of a live performer through audio
filters, tape loops or the performer's interaction withacoustic feedback. Robert Ashley's Wolfman (1964) is an
example of the use of high amplification of voice to achieve
feedback that alters the voice and a prerecorded tape.
By the end of the decade a number of composer's had
technologically progressed to designing their own custom
circuitry. For example, Gordon Mumma's Mesa (1966) andHornpipe (1967) are both examples of instrumental pieces
that use custom-built electronics capable of semi-automatic
response to the sounds generated by the performer orresonances of the performance space. One composer whose work
illustrates a continuity of gradually increasing technicalsophistication is David Behrman. From fairly rudimentary
uses of electronic effects in the early 1960's his work
progressed through various stages of live electronic
complexification to compositions like Runthrough (1968),
where custom-built circuitry and a photo electric sounddistribution
matrixis
activatedbyperformers
withflashlights.
This trend toward new performance situations in which
the technology functioned as structurally intrinsic to thecomposition continued to gain favor. Many composers began toexperiment with a vast array of electronic control devices
and unique sound sources which often required audio
engineersandtechnicians
tofunctionasperforming
musicians, and musicians to be technically competent. Since
the number of such works proliferated rapidly, a few
examples of the range of activities during the 1960's must
suffice. In 1965, Alvin Lucier presented his Music for Solo
Performer 1965 which used amplified brainwave signals to
articulate the sympathetic resonances of an orchestra of
percussion instruments. John Mizelle's Photo Oscillations(1969) used multiple lasers as light sources through which
the performers walked in order to trigger a variety ofphoto-cell activated circuits. Pendulum Music (1968) by
Steve
Reich
simplyused
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-synchronouswiththetechnical
andaesthetic
advances that were occurring in live performance that I havejust outlined, the use of digital computers in live
performance began to slowly emerge in the late 1960's. The
most comprehensive achievement at marrying digital control
sophistication to the realtime sound generation capabilitiesof the analog synthesizer was probably the Sal-Mar
Construction (1969) of Salvatore Martirano. This hybrid
system 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-built
analog and digital circuitry controlled from a completely
unique 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 in
1969-1972 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. The
SMC 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 speakers
that hang in a variety of patterns about the space. The
speakers weigh about 6lbs. each, and are gently mobile
according to air currents in the space. A changing patternof sound-traffic by 4 independently controlled programs
produces 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 switches
that 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 switches
are multiplexed down 4 levels. The unique characteristic of
the switch is that it can be driven both manually andlogically, which allows human/machine interaction. Most
innovative feature of the human/machine interface is that itallows the user to switch from control of macro to micro
parameters 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 performer
actions to AUTO and allow the SMC to make all decisions.
One of the major difficulties with the hybrid
performance systems of the late 1960's and early 1970's was
the sheer size of digital computers. One solution to thisproblem was presented by Gordon Mumma in his composition
Conspiracy 8 (1970). When the piece was presented at New
York's Guggenheim Museum, a remote data-link was established
to a computer in Boston which received information about theperformance in progress. In turn this computer then issued
instructions to the performers and generated sounds whichwere also transmitted to the performance site through datalink.
Starting in 1970 an ambitious attempt at using the newmini-computers was initiated by Ed Kobrin, a former student
and 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 hybrid
system (actually referred to as Hybrid I through V) thatinterfaced a mini-computer to an array of voltage-controlled
electronic sound modules. As a live performance electronic
instrument, its six-voice polyphony, complexity and speed ofinteraction made it the most powerful realtime system of its
time. One of its versions is described by Kobrin:"The most recent system consists of a PDP 11 computer with
16k words of core memory, dual digital cassette unit, CRT
terminal with ASCII keyboard, and a piano-type keyboard. A
digital interface consisting of interrupt modules, address
decoding circuitry, 8 and 10 bit digital to analog
converters with holding registers, programmable counters anda series of tracking and status registers is hardwired to asynthesizer. The music generated is distributed to 16
speakers creating a controlled sound environment."
Perhaps the most radical and innovative aspect of live
electronic performance practice to emerge during this time
was the appearance of a new form of collective music making.

In Europe, North America and Japan several important groupsofmusiciansbegan
tocollaborate
incollective
compositional, improvisational, and theatrical activities
that relied heavily upon the new electronic technologies.
Some of the reasons for this trend were: 1) the performance
demands of the technology itself which often required
multiple performers to accomplish basic tasks; 2) the
improvisatory 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 encouraging
social experimentation.
As early as 1960, the ONCE Group had formed in Ann
Arbor, Michigan. Comprised of a diverse group of architects,
composers, dancers, filmmakers, sculptors and theater
people, the Once Group presented the annual Once Festival.
The principal composers of this group consisted of George
Cacioppo, Roger Reynolds, Donald Scavarda, Robert Ashley and
Gordon Mumma, most of whom were actively exploring tapemusic and developing live electronic techniques. In 1966
Ashley and Mumma joined forces with David Behrman and Alvin
Lucier to create one of the most influential live electronic
performance ensembles, the Sonic Arts Union. While its
members would collaborate in the realization of compositions
by 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 San
Francisco Tape Music Center such as Pauline Oliveros, Terry
Riley, Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick. Likewise a
powerful center for collaborative activity had developed at
the University of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana where Herbert
Brün, 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, Reynolds
and Robert Erickson were now teaching.
In Europe several innovative collectives had also
formed. To perform his own music Stockhausen had gathered
together a live electronic music ensemble consisting of
Alfred Alings, Harald Boje, Peter Eötvös, Johannes Fritsch,
Rolf Gehlhaar, and Aloys Kontarsky. In 1964 an international
collective called the Gruppo di Improvisazione Nuova
Consonanza was created in Rome for performing live
electronic music. Two years later, Rome also saw theformation of Musica Elettronica Viva, one of the mostradical electronic performance collectives to advance group
improvisation that often involved audience participation. In
its original incarnation the group included Allan Bryant,
Alvin Curran, John Phetteplace, Frederic Rzewski, andRichard Teitelbaum.
The other major collaborative group concerned with the
implications 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 but
disciplined improvisations with electro-acoustic materials.
In many ways the group was an intentional social experiment
the experience of which deeply informed the subsequent
Scratch Orchestra collective of Cardew's.
One final category of live electronic performance
practice involves the more focused activities of the
Minimalist composers of the 1960's. These composers andtheir activities were involved with both individual andcollective performance activities and in large part confused
the boundaries between the so-called "serious" avant-garde
and popular music. The composer Terry Riley exemplifies thisidea quite dramatically. During the late 1960's Riley
created a very popular form of solo performance using wind
instruments, keyboards and voice with tape delay systems
that was an outgrowth from his early experiments into
pattern music and his growing interest in Indian music. In
1964 the New York composer LaMonte Young formed The Theatreof Eternal Music to realize his extended investigations into
pure vertical harmonic relationships and tunings. The
ensemble consisted of string instruments, singing voices andprecisely tuned drones generated by audio oscillators. In
early performances the performers included John Cale, Tony
Conrad, LaMonte Young, and Marian Zazeela.
A very brief list of significant live electronic music worksof the 1960's is the following:1960) Cage: Cartridge Music1964) Young: The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys; Sender:
Desert Ambulance; Ashley: Wolfman; Stockhausen: MikrophonieI1965) Lucier: Music for Solo Performer
1966) Mumma: Mesa
1967) Stockhausen: Prozession; Mumma: Runthrough1968) Tudor: Rainforest; Behrman: Runthrough
1969)
Cage
and
Hiller:HPSCHD;
Martirano:
Construction; Mizelle: Photo Oscillations

Sal-Mar1970) Rosenboom: Ecology of the Skin
4) Multi-MediaThe historical antecedents for mixed-media connect
multiple threads of artistic traditions as diverse as
theatre, cinema, music, sculpture, literature, and dance.
Since the extreme eclecticism of this topic and the sheer
volume of activity associated with it is too vast for thefocus of this essay, I will only be concerned with a few
examples of mixed-media activities during the 1960's that
impacted the electronic art and music traditions from which
subsequent video experimentation emerged.
Much of the previously discussed live electronic musicof the 1960's can be placed within the mixed-media category
in that the performance circumstances demanded by thetechnology were intentionally theatrical or environmental.
This emphasis on how technology could help to articulate new
spatial relationships and heightened interaction between thephysical senses was shared with many other artists from thevisual, theatrical and dance traditions. Many new terms
arose to describe the resulting experiments of various
individuals and groups such as "happenings," "events,""actiontheatre,""environments,"or
what
Richard
Kostelanetz called "The Theatre of Mixed-Means." In many
ways the aesthetic challenge and collaborative agenda ofthese projects was conceptually linked to the various
counter-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, "kinetic
sculpture," 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 were
engaged in mixed-media as their principal activity. In
Michigan, the ONCE Group had been preceded by the
Manifestations: Light and Sound performances and Space
Theatre of Milton Cohen as early 1956. The filmmaker Jordan
Belson and Henry Jacobs organized the Vortex performances in
San 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 of
Eternal Music. The group Pulsa was particularly active
through 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 placed
52 polyplanar loudspeakers which were controlled, along withthe lights, by computer and prerecorded magnetic tape. This
resulted in streams of light and sound being projected
throughout the park at high speeds. At the heart of thisevent was the unique Hybrid Digital/Analog Audio Synthesizer
which Pulsa designed and used in most of their subsequent
performance 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 Davis
describes them:"USCO's leaders were strongly influenced by McLuhan's ideas
as expressed in his book Understanding Media. Theirenvironments--performed in galleries, churches, schools, andmuseums across the United States--increased in complexity
with 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 upon
John Cage during this period and marks a shift in his work
toward a more politically and socially engaged discourse.
This shift was exemplified in two of his major works during
the 1960's which were large multi-media extravaganza's
staged during residencies at the University of Illinois in1967 and 1969: Musicircus and HPSCHD. The later work wasconceivedincollaboration
withLejaren
Hillerandsubsequently used 51 computer-generated sound tapes, inaddition to seven harpsichords and numerous film projections
by Ronald Nameth.
Another example of a major mixed-media work composed
during the 1960's is the Teatro Probabilistico III (1968)
for actors, musicians, dancers, light, TV cameras, public
and 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 media
performance at that time:"This piece is an exercise in searching for total perception
leading 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 used
for this purpose. It also includes the TV communication on a
permutation 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 who
controls the freedom of the powers by dictating orders
through signs. He has power over everything and yet hecannot predict everything. The performers improvise on atime-event structure, according to general directions. The
numberofperformers
isdetermined
by
the
space
possibilities. 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 exercise
in 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 an
explicit embracing of technology as a creative countercultural force. In addition to McLuhan, the figure of
Buckminster Fuller had a profound influence upon an entire
generation of artists. Fuller's assertion that the radical
and
often
negativechangeswroughtbytechnologicalinnovation were also opportunities for proper understanding
and redirection of resources became an organizing principle
for vanguard thinkers in the arts. The need to taketechnology seriously as the social environment in which
artists lived and formulated critical relationships with theculture at large became formalized in projects such as
Experiments in Art and Technology, Inc. and the various
festivals and events they sponsored: Nine Evenings: Theaterand Engineering; Some More Beginnings; the series of
performances presented at Automation House in New York City
during the late 1960's; and the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion for Expo
70 in Osaka, Japan. One of the participants in Expo 70,
GordonMumma,
describes
theimmensecomplexity
andsophistication that mixed-media presentations had evolved
into by that time:"The most remarkable of all multi-media collaborations wasprobably the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion for Expo 70 in Osaka. This
project included many ideas distilled from previous multimedia activities, and significantly advanced both the art
and technology by numerous innovations. The Expo 70 pavilion
was remarkable for several reasons. It was an international
collaboration of dozens of artists, as many engineers, andnumerous industries, all coordinated by Experiments in Art
and Technology, inc. From several hundred proposals, theprojects of twenty-eight artists and musicians were selected
for presentation in the pavilion. The outside of thepavilion was a 120-foot-diameter geodesic dome of white
plastic
andsteel,
enshroudedbyanever-changing,artificially generated water-vapor cloud. The public plazain front of the pavilion contained seven man-sized, soundemitting floats, that moved slowly and changed direction
when touched. A thirty-foot polar heliostat sculpture
tracked 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 large
spaces, one black-walled and clam-shaped, the other aninety-foot high hemispherical mirror dome. The sound andlight environment of these spaces was achieved by an
innovative audio and optical system consisting of state-ofthe -art analog audio circuitry, with krypton-laser,tungsten, quartz-iodide, and xenon lighting, all controlled
by a specially designed digital computer programming
facility.
The sound, light, and control systems, and their integration
with 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 soundmoving capabilities of the dome were achieved with a rhombic
grid 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 to
thirty-two different inputs could be controlled at one time.
Furthermore, it was possible to electronically modify these
inputs by using eight channels of modification circuitry

that could change the pitch, loudness, and timbre in a vast
number of combinations. Another console panel contained
digital circuitry that could be programmed to automaticallycontrol aspects of the light and sound. By their programmingof this control panel, the performers could delegate any
amount of the light and sound functions to the digital
circuitry. Thus, at one extreme the pavilion could beentirely a live-performance instrument, and at the other, anautomated environment. The most important design concept of
the pavilion was that it was a live-performance, multi-media
instrument. Between the extremes of manual and automatic
control of so many aspects of environment, the artist could
establish 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 were
extremely diverse and included all the varieties ofelectronic music genres previously established throughout
the 20th century. Academic tape studios continued to thrivewith a great deal of unique custom-built hardware being
conceived 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 live
performers were advanced as were new concepts for live
electronics and multi-media. A great rush of activity in new
circuit design also took place and the now familiar patternof continual miniaturization with increased power and memory
expansion for computers began to become evident. Along withthis increased level of electronic music activity, twosignificant developments became evident: 1) what had been
for decades a pioneering fringe activity within the larger
context of music as a cultural activity now begins to become
dominant; and 2) the commercial and sophisticated industrial
manufacturing of electronic music systems and materials that
had 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 hardware
design 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

musichardwaredesign.
Whiletheindustrial
representationist agenda succeeded in the guise of popular
culture, some pioneering creative work continued within thedivergent contexts of academic tape studios and computer
music research
centersandin
the
non-institutional
aesthetic
researchofindividualcomposers.
While
specialized 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's
was the progressive move toward the abandonment of analog
electronics in favor of digital systems which could
potentially recapitulate and summarize the prior history ofelectronic music in standardized forms. By the mid-1980's
theindustrial
onslaughtofhighlyredundant
MIDI
interfaceable digital synthesizers, processors, and samplers
even began to displace the commercial merchandizing oftraditional acoustic orchestral and band instruments. By
1990, the presence of these commercial technologies had
become a ubiquitous cultural presence that largely defined
the nature of the music being produced.
Conclusion
What began in this century as a utopian and vaguely
Romantic
passion,namelythat
technology
offeredanopportunity to expand human perception and provide new
avenues for the discovery of reality, subsequently evolved
through the 1960's into an intoxication with this humanistic
agenda 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 social
critique built tools that ultimately became the resources
for an industrial movement that in large part eradicatedtheir ideological concerns. Most of these artists and theirwork have fallen into the anonymous cracks of a consumer
culture that now regards their experimentation merely as
inherited technical R & D. While the mass distribution of
the electronic means of musical production appears to be an
egalitarian success, as a worst case scenario it may alsosignify the suffocation of the modernist dream at the handsof industrial profiteering. To quote the philosopher Jacques
Attali:"What is called music today is all too often only a disguisefor the monologue of power. However, and this is the supreme
irony of it all, never before have musicians tried so hard
to communicate with their audience, and never before hasthat communication been so deceiving. Music now seems hardly

more
than
a
somewhatclumsyglorification of musicians andindustrial sector."

excuseforthe growththeselfof a new

From a slightly more optimistic perspective, thecurrent dissolving of emphasis upon heroic individual
artistic contributions, within the context of the current
proliferation of musical technology, may signify the
emergence 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 tools
and instruments either signifies the complete failure of themodernist agenda or it signifies the culminating expressionof commoditization through mass production of the tools
necessary to deconstruct the redundant loop of consumption.
After decades of selling records as a replacement for theexperience of creative action, the music industry now sells
the tools which may facilitate that creative participation.
We shift emphasis to the means of production instead of the
production of consumer demand.
Whichever way the evolution of electronic music unfolds
will 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 determined
design biases, induced by the cliches of commercial market
forces, depends upon the continuation of a belief in thenecessity for alternative voices willing to articulate thatwhich the status quo is unwillingly to hear.