MPA 334 Week 2

Three principle themes of electronic music:

1. The marriage of technology and music is inescapable and not always perfect
2. The history of invention
3. The diffusion og electronic music into worldwide musical culture

Edgar Varese (1883-1965)

• Considered to be the father of poeme electronique.
• Poeme electronique was first composed by "using three synchronized tracks of magnetic tape" (p4)
• French composer
• Worked closely with fellow composer Feruccio Busoni (1866-1924)

Melvin Kranzberg (1917-95)

• renowned scholar on the history of technology
• "'Invention is the mother of necessity'"

Philip Reis (1834-74)

• Reis Telephone, first introduced in 1861. The idea for the Reis Telephone was a device that detected sound and transmitted it from one membrane to another using a wire connected to both ends. The wire was charged by a battery

Elisha Gray (1835-1901)

• Involved in telegraph communication.
• Employed by the Western Electric Company as a supervisor.
• Best known for contentious patent dispute with Alexander Graham Bell over the design of the original 1876 telephone.
• Involved in the creation of the Musical Telegraph, which first dates back to 1874.
• Showed how frequencies changed depending on the resistance of electromagnet.
• Had two telegraph keys, each having an electromagnet and small strip of metal (a.k.a. a reed). When the telegraph key was pressed, an electrical circuit was closed, causing the reed to vibrate at a frequency that was audible when electrically amplified.
• The instrument was polyphonic.
• Predates the electric organ by 60 years.
• Could transmit musical signals over ordinary telegraph wires to a receiver stationed as far as 200 miles away.
• Gray soon lost interest in the telegraph's musical applications and instead saw its potential for being able to send several telegraph signals at once.
• 1885, Ernst Lorenz, a German inventor further developed the sound-generating circuits and even found ways to control the envelope of sound.

Herman von Helmholtz (1821-94)

• German physicist who was interested in how people hear music.
• Published On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music, which was about acoustic and tone generation.
• Inventor of the Helmholtz Resonator, "which demonstrate the theory of complex tone quality".

Thaddeus Cahill (1867-1934)

• Took an interest in Helmholtz's work and was inspired to devise an electrical method to fabricate the musical sound and giving a single performer the power of a synthetic orchestra.
• First patent was filed on August 10, 1895
• found the original design to be too complicated and impractical, so he assimilated the features into a "better-conceived 45-page patent opus in 1896".
• Considered the first person to possess a sense for the commercial potential of electronic music and is even credited for coining the term "synthesizing" in the field of electronic music.
• The instrument he later patented in 1897 was known by two different names, the Dynamophone and the Telharmonium.
• consisted of electrical tone-generating mechanics
• a touch-sensitive polyphonic keyboard for activating the tone-generating circuitry
• and a speaker system for reproducing the sound
• His first Telharmonium concert was in New York in 1906.

The time of Cahill's Telharmonium and early electronic music face some of the same problems as we do today:

• Method tone generating
• Tuning
• Interface design
• Power supply
• Size
• Mixing of sounds
• Amplification
• Control of dynamics
• Funding issues
• Widespread uses

The Futurists:

Feruccio Busoni (1866-1924)

• Italian musician, composer, and teacher.
• Had an interest in "freeing music from its 'hallowed traditions".
• "A product of the machine age, he was compelled to use his music as a means for discarding the past in order to link to the future".
• Published Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music, which documented his musical ideas.
• "'Music was born free; and to win freedom is its destiny".
• "Inspired a younger generation of composers to open their minds to the use of any and all sounds in music"
• "One of the first composers to realize technology might be a means to fulfill his musical ideas"
• Busoni understood and foretold how machines and industry would become necessary in the production and creativity of music, "'I almost think that in the new great music, machines will be necessary and will be assigned a share in it. Perhaps industry, too will bring forth her share in the artistic ascent.'"

"The Futurist Manifesto":

• First published in 1909 and written be Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944).
• Marinetti's words anticipated the rise of Fascisim.
• "Beauty exists only in struggle"

Luigi Russolo (1885-1947)

• Name closely associated with musical movements of the Futurist movement.
• Published the Art of Noise.
• Envisioned new ways of making music through the use of the sounds of the industrial age.
• Categorized music into six separated categories:
• Roars, thunders, explosions
• Whistling, hiss, puff
• Whispers, murmurs, mumblings
• Screeching, creaks, rustles
• Percussive instruments (metal, wood)
• Voices of animals and people
• Had his first Futurist Concerto in 1914, which was met with an angry audience, who threw rotten fruits and vegetables at the performers and composer.

Lee de Forest (1874-1961)

• Invented vaccuum tubes which would take a relatively low signal and amplifying it; 
• this would later lead to modern radio productivity
• the amplification of microphones and musical instruments, 
• the innovations of televisions and high fidelity recording

Lev Sergeyevich Termen, also known as, Leon Theremin (1896-1993)

• Russian electrical engineer and cellist
• The inventor of the Theremin, which was a sort-of instrument that uses a beat frequency method to produce its sonorities.
• Patented in 1928
• Instead of using a keyboard, like the Audion Piano, the Theremin was played by moving the hands around two antennae, one upright antenna and one horizontal, circular antenna.
• The vertical antenna was played with the right hand and controlled the pitch
• The horizontal antenna was played with the left hand and controlled the amplitude, or loudness, of the sound.
• The sound remained continuous unless the left hand was touching the horizontal antenna.
• The first gesture-controlled electronic musical instrument.
• The way the machine works is by using an electrical charge held by the human body called the Capacitance. This charge would disrupt the electromagnetic field around each of the antennae.