Transcript Chapter 1 - Routledge

Chapter 1
Electronic Music Before
1945
Contents
•Music, Invention, and Culture
•Earliest Experiments
•Into the Age of Electronics
•Early Electronic Music Performance
Instruments
•Other Early Approaches to Electronic Music
•Early Recording Technology
•Looking Forward
Chapter 1 Electronic Music Before 1945
• The first era of electronic music comprises the
instruments and music created prior to 1945.
• In 1863, Hermann von Helmholtz published On the
Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the
Theory of Music, a classic work on acoustics and
tone generation.
• The field of electronic music has often been led by
composers and inventors with a need to invent a way
to realize their musical visions.
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Chapter 1 Electronic Music Before 1945
• Two early electrical music devices, the Reis Telephone
(1861) and Musical Telegraph (1874), were offspring of
the new field of telecommunications.
• The first electronic music synthesizer was the massive
Telharmonium patented by Thaddeus Cahill in 1896 and
using a dynamo with rotating pitch shafts and tone wheels.
• Composer Feruccio Busoni published Sketch of a New
Aesthetic of Music in 1907 and anticipated the use of
electrical machines in the development of new music,
revealing an important relationship between the inventor
and the musician.
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Chapter 1 Electronic Music Before 1945
• Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo published L’Arte dei rumori (The Art
of Noise) in1913, a musical manifesto that encouraged the use
of noise in music. Russolo and Piatti constructed mechanical
noise-producing instruments for creating Futurist music,
predating the availability of audio recording technologies for the
inclusion of noise in music by many years.
• Edgard Varèse was an experimental composer who anticipated
the development of electronic musical instruments. In 1922 he
spoke of the need for the collaboration of inventors and
musicians and devoted much effort prior to World War II
composing for available electronic musical instruments and
seeking funds for research in the field.
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Chapter 1 Electronic Music Before 1945
• Electronic musical instruments invented prior to World War II
were performance instruments designed to play live in real time.
• The first boom in electronic musical instrument development
began in 1917 with the availability of the De Forest vacuum
tube. The vacuum tube provided miniaturization of electrical
circuits, amplification, and tone-generating capability.
• Electro-mechanical instruments used electrical means to amplify
and modify mechanically produced tones. Examples include the
tone wheel design of the Telharmonium and Hammond Organ
and the use of magnetic pickups to convert the vibrations of
piano strings into electrically amplified sounds.
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Chapter 1 Electronic Music Before 1945
• Electronic tone generation was accomplished using
vacuum tubes. The first such instruments used beat
frequency technology and included
– Theremin
– Ondes Martenot.
• Another generation of instruments used multiple,
tuned tube oscillators to reproduce tones, including
– Coupleaux–Givelet organ (early 1930s)
– Hammond Novachord (1939).
– The Trautonium (1928) was a tube oscillator instrument that
used a pressure-sensitive fingerboard instead of piano keys.
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Chapter 1 Electronic Music Before 1945
• The magnetic tape recording was invented in 1928
but was not widely available outside of Germany until
1945.
• The introduction of high-quality sound recording and
editing ended the first era of live-performance
electronic music and began the era of composing
with recorded sounds.
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Reis Telephone (left) and Microphone (right)
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Gray’s Musical Telegraph
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Telharmonium in Holyoke, MA, 1906
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QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
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Telharmonium Patent
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Russolo and Piatti with Intonarumori, 1914
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Vintage Theremin, 1930 (photo: Thom Holmes)
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Vintage Ondes Martenot, showing finger-ring (photo: Thom Holmes)
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