New musics rise from the secret projects and surplus junk of World War II.
Les Paul Photo: William Gottlieb
In this episode ...
Pierre Schaeffer and musique concrète;
Early tape recording: the life-threatening steel wire tapes at the BBC, the German Magnetophon and Bing Crosby’s Ampex;
Guitarist Les Paul shows some recording chops with his overdubbing techniques;
John Cage’s early experiments with sound and recording;
Louis and Bebe Barron and their ‘electronic tonalities’ for The Forbidden Planet;
The Theremin in the movies: Miklós Rósza, Bernard Herrmann and Dr Samuel Hoffman;
Electronic keyboards from the 50s: the Solovox, Ondioline and Clavioline;
Homer Dudley’s Vocoder;
Robert Beyer, Werner Meyer-Eppler and Herbert Eimert set up a studio for elektronische Musik at Cologne Radio;
Karlheinz Stockhausen gets to work in Paris with musique concrète but gets disillusioned and moves to Cologne.
Karlheinz Stockhausen Photo: Kathinka Pasveer, CC3.0
Explore more of These Hopeful Machines
Written and presented by James Gardner, produced by Tim Dodd and James Gardner for Radio New Zealand.
Scroll down for handy links and a bibliography.
Grateful thanks for help in the production of Episode 2 go to:
Mark Ayres; Mark Brend; Christopher Fox; Ian Helliwell; Adrian Hollay, for being Karlheinz Stockhausen; Martin Iddon; Penny Lomax of the ABC’s The Music Show, for Tristram Cary interview material; Fiona McAlpine; Claudia Meyer-Hesse of the International Music Institute Darmstadt, for the 1956 archival recordings of Stockhausen and Alois Hába; National Public Radio (USA), for the interviews with Bebe Barron and Bob Moog;
Ian Pace; Rula Schaad; Jeff Stadelman; Dave Tompkins, for the Bell Labs vocoder demonstrations.
Links
- Jennifer Iverson – Invisible Collaboration: The Dawn of Electronic Music at the WDR
- The Clavioline
- The Ondioline
- Georges Jenny on the Ondioline in 1948 (Dutch newsreel)
- Sampling the Solovox and Univox (Clavioline)
- Instruments for New Music – Thomas Patteson's book on early electronic instruments – free download
- Jean-Jacques Perrey on ‘I’ve Got A Secret’, 1960
- Jean-Jacques Perrey website
- Les Paul Wikipedia article
- Les Paul article at Sound On Sound
- Les Paul Foundation website
- John Cage
- Ian Hugo’s experimental film ‘Bells of Atlantis’ with electronic music by Louis and Bebe Barron
- Bebe Barron on NPR
- Magnetic Tape history
- Joe Meek, A Portrait
- Barry Cleveland’s book ‘Joe Meek’s Bold Techniques’
- A video about the Vocoder, produced by The New Yorker
- Karlheinz Stockhausen (official site)
- Pierre Henry
- Jon Leidecker's excellent Variations series, looking at "appropriative collage"
- 'Memorabilia' series on collecting sound and manipulating audio
Bibliography
Jennifer Iverson
Electronic Inspirations: Technologies of the Cold War Musical Avant-Garde
Oxford University Press 2019
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/electronic-inspirations-9780190868208
Pierre Schaeffer (translated by Christine North and John Dack)
In Search of a Concrete Music
University of California Press, 2012
https://www.ucpress.edu/books/in-search-of-a-concrete-music/paper
Pierre Schaeffer (translated by Christine North and John Dack)
Treatise on Musical Objects
An Essay across Disciplines
University of California Press, 2017
https://www.ucpress.edu/books/treatise-on-musical-objects/paper
Thom Holmes
Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music and Culture (6thedition)
Routledge 2020
https://www.routledge.com/Electronic-and-Experimental-Music-Technology-Music-and-Culture/Holmes/p/book/9781138365469
Peter Manning
Electronic and Computer Music (Fourth Edition)
Oxford University Press 2013
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199746392.do
James Pritchett
The Music of John Cage
Cambridge University Press 1996
http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/music/twentieth-century-and-contemporary-music/music-john-cage
David W. Patterson (ed.)
John Cage: Music, Philosophy, and Intention 1933–1950
Routledge 2008
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415996679/
Dave Tompkins
How to Wreck A Nice Beach: The Vocoder from World War II to Hip-Hop: The Machine Speaks
StopSmiling Books/Melville House Publishing 2011
https://stopsmiling-books.com/how-to-wreck-a-nice-beach.php
Mark Brend
The Sound Of Tomorrow
Bloomsbury 2012
https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/sound-of-tomorrow-9780826424525/
Nick Collins and Julio d’Escrivan (eds.)
The Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music (2nd ed.)
Cambridge University Press 2017
https://www.cambridge.org/nz/universitypress/subjects/music/twentieth-century-and-contemporary-music/cambridge-companion-electronic-music-2nd-edition
