The Development of Early Electronic Music: from John Cage to Karlheinz Stockhausen Published March 30, 2010 Culture

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From the dawn of the 20th century, composers of Western music had been looking for new ways, and new tools with which, to express themselves. Austrian composer Arnold Schnberg spent the early 1900s century in pursuit of values beyond western musics structure of melody and harmony (Prendergast 30), and French composer Edgar Varse stated in 1916, I refuse to submit myself to sounds that have already been heard. What I am looking for are new technical mediums which can lend themselves to every expression of thought and keep up with that thought (Griffiths 11). Varses desire for new sounds was congruent with a need to express the changes occurring in society, which, at this time was being rapidly driven by technological change. Scientists, engineers and artists were to harness that drive for change, and the power of electricity, to create new instruments and music making techniques. New musical instruments were being created from as widely diverse electronic tools as tape recorders and valve oscillators, joining flutes and violins in the early 20th Century orchestra. Though these experiments in sound were not always immediately understood, technological permeation into every aspect of early twentieth century life aided the public in accepting these experiments with electronic music technology. And according to Paul Griffiths, the birth of electronic music was not only dependent on development of electronic equipment, but also the coming of a mental atmosphere in which radical musical experiment might seem feasible (Griffiths 8). Feasible to both artists and the listeners, that is. As

Varse stated: My experimenting is done before I make the music. Afterwards, it is the listener who must experiment (Holmes 134).

Musicians since the Romantic period had pushed the boundaries of what could be considered music, slowly forcing the public forward at each new frontier. Schnberg, with his focus on the importance of individual tones, introduced a type of music, Serialism, which would later pave the way for electronic experiments in sound. Directly influenced by Schnbergs serialism were the sonic experiments of John Cage and later, those of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Cage sought to include

all

sounds, including noise, into the realm of music. Stockhausen was the first person to create

music made entirely of synthesized sound, freeing electronic instruments from the sidelines of orchestral inclusion. But as the early electronic instruments and their sounds were quite primitive, their addition to the Western music repertoire, had that music been driven by intricate harmonies and melodies, would have proved impossible. In this essay I will examine the intentions and the work of the pioneer artists creating music from electronic sources, from the first inclusion of electronic sounds in compositions to sound generated by entirely electronic means. I will situate electric music breakthroughs in the historical, socio-cultural world in which they occurred. Finally, I will attempt to discover any socio-cultural changes wrought by the introduction of electronic and synthesized music. Technological discovery combined with changes in modern society and the adoption of a new musical awareness, to support the creation and acceptance of electronic music.

Early Twentieth Century and its sea change

From the late 1800s, composers such as Debussy, Mahler and Schnberg began to affect a sea change in western music, rapidly extending the range of sounds which could be admitted into music (Griffiths 9). Schnbergs explorations in atonality and his invention of serialism lead to our understanding and accepting music as individual sounds, or tones, as opposed simply an aggregate of tones in melody and/or harmony, that any combination of pitches could be used, that there need be no favouring of the tonal harmonies which had been musics foundation since the Renaissance (Griffiths 9). By dispensing with traditional structure of music Schnberg, along with his pupils Berg and Webern sought to shatter the system that constrained western music in order to open the door wide to endless possibilities for the creation of music.

Edgard Varse (1883-1965) was, according to Barry Truax the composer who foresaw the potential of technology for the liberation of sound from traditional models (Truax 233), believing the natural extension of avant-garde music was into the use of electronics (Holmes 131). In the 1920s Varse for a second time publicly called for new instruments, acknowledging that, the composer and the electrician will have to labor together (Thompson 140). Varses most controversial works appeared during the 1920s and 1930s, [and] attempted to stretch the boundaries of music within the instrumental tradition, even if that meant using on percussion instruments, as in the classic 1931 composition

Ionisation

(Truax 233). American composer

John Cage, a student of Schnberg, took his mentors ideas about serialism into the world of electronics. Cage did not restrict his sound palette to a certain number of tones, but instead opened his ears to any and all possible sounds, pitched and unpitched (Holmes 113).

In 1915, Edgard Varse left Europe for the United States. He was amazed by the soundscape of New York City and sought to present it in his music, music that he had only been able to hypothesize

in Europe (Thompson 138). But audience reaction was at first mixed: While Varse had been able to transform that noise into music, his audience who lived in that same din apparently could not (Thompson 139). At this same time in America, due to the recent popularity of jazz music, debates raged on the difference between music (i.e. western orchestral traditions) and noise (i.e. jazz). At the base of debates of the musical and cultural value of noise was an assumption of a fundamental dichotomy between it and music. Music was legitimate sound and noise was not. Music was harmonious, regular, and orderly; noise was discordant, irregular, and disorderly. This definition of noise had long been asserted by classically trained musicians and was backed by the authority of science (Thompson 132).

The concert-going public eventually did begin to accept a different musical syntax, i.e. music that included, or was based on noise. According to Thompson, this occurred in conjunction with early twentieth century questioning of the authority of long-standing scientific definitions in regard to nearly everything (Thompson 133). Scientific distinction between noise and music was being challenged, argues Thompson, not only within jazz but also from within the realm of elite musical culture itself, as a new generation of classically trained composers self-consciously turned to noise for inspiration and brought it directly to the concert hall (Thompson 133). Some composers attempted to represent the noises of the modern world with both traditional musical instruments and noisemaking machines introduced into their orchestrations (Thompson 133). But for Varse, his use of tools such as the siren in his orchestral pieces was not to re-create the sounds of fire engines or ambulances, but rather to bring into his music those sounds he could not achieve with traditional instruments (Thompson 140). The intent of the composers was to redefine the very meaning of music and to transform the ways that people listened to both music

and noise (Thompson 133). These experiments were to pave the way for music made from electronic instruments.

In 1863, Hermann von Helmholtz published

On the Sensations of Tone as a

which put forth a new

Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music,

understanding in musical acoustics (Griffiths 14). Helmholtz discovery was that the the timbre of a note, the quality which distinguishes a middle C played on the clarinet from the same note on the piano, depends on contributions from frequencies other than that of the basic pitch, it also gives rise to other frequencies of vibration (Griffiths 14). This discovery was of such value to early electronic musicians because it was realised that if an oscillator can be made to produce a single pure frequency, a sine tone, it should then be possible to combine different frequencies to mimic an acoustic instruments timbre (Griffiths 14). It was also then realised that if an oscillator could produce single pure tones, it should be possible to then combine them into entirely new timbres, thus enabling the composer to define an infinite variety of timbres with exactitude (Griffiths 14). No longer would composers be forced to work within the constraints of the particular timbre of acoustic instruments, because any and every combination of timbre would soon be available.

In 1906 Thaddeus Cahill brought the first electronic music, via his 200 ton Telharmonium, to a public audience. The telharmonium generated sounds from dynamos, and transmitted them over telephone wires to citizens of New York (Griffiths 9). Italian writer and composer Ferruccio Busoni lauded Cahills invention, claiming he now saw the way out of the impasse he had detected in western music (Griffiths 9). Exhaustion, he wrote, surely waits at the end of a course the longest lap of which has already been covered. Wither then shall we turn our eyes? In what direction does the next step lead? To abstract sound, to unhampered technique, to unlimited tonal material

(Griffiths 9). But, as the telharmonium was introduced one year before Schnberg began his journey into atonality, the public was not quite ready for electronic music. And while the sounds that emanated from Cahills invention might have been too futuristic for some, Varse was not impressed for another reason: upon hearing the telharmonium he claimed that he did not detect in its tones the music he sought to create, and he did not pursue composing music for the device (Thompson 140).

Perhaps the greatest advance for electronic music came in 1915, with the with American inventor Lee De Forests valve oscillator. The oscillator, which continues to this day as a basic device in electronic sound-generating equipment, made it possible to produce pitched tones from electrical signals. (Griffiths 10). Manageable electronic instruments were now on the horizon. The earliest sound synthesizing instruments were of the heterodyning design, where two high-frequency oscillators beat together to produce a difference-tone that is audible (Darter 27). Russian inventor Leon Termen developed the first instrument of using this principle, in 1919-20. Further refined during the twenties, [Termens] instrument, the theremin, used an oscillator which was remotely controlled by the motions of the performers hands around a vertical aerial (Griffiths 10). Theremin took his invention on the road in 1927 and had a whirlwind tour of European capitals, where it was reported that Professor Theremin had to but twiddle his little finger to vary pitch and amplitude. When he played at the Paris Opera, police were called to keep order among the crowds that thronged the performance, and standing room was sold in the boxes for the first time in history (Darter 29). Termens invention found similar success in the United States (Darter 29). Public reaction was at first favorable, but defects in the new instrument were soon pointed out. As you can imagine, the instrument offers

incredible

intonation problems, since there is

no reference for pitch (Darter 29 emphasis his).

Other instruments were then introduced, each one building upon the principles of the theremin most of them seeking to improve its design flaws. Maurice Martinots ondes martenot and German Friedrich Trautweins trautonium both appeared in 1928, and German inventor Jrg Mager introduced many electronic instruments in the following years. (Griffiths 10). These instruments were more sophisticated and easy to use than the theremin, as they enabled the performer to more easily control pitch. Many composers became immediately enamored with the novel sounds that generated the ondes martenot and the trautonium (Griffiths 10), and these instruments were given a soloists role in the orchestra.

Early Electronic Music Over five hundred orchestral and chamber works have been written for the ondes martenot (Darter 30). Messiaen wrote for an ensemble of six ondes martenot in his (1937) and used the instrument as a soloist in his

Fte des belles eaux

Trois petites liturgies de la

(1946-48); it was also

Prsence Devine

(1944) and

Turangalla-symphonie

used by Honegger, Jolivet, Boulez and others. Hindemith and Strauss both composed for the trautonium, and Varse had two instruments specially built by Termen for his

Ecuatorial

(1934), later replacing these with ondes martenot (Griffiths 10). But according to Griffiths, the electronic instruments of the twenties and thirties, though they enjoyed something of a vogue, did not come anywhere near providing all the benefits which composers expected from the new technology. They might allow music to push further towards the extremes of audible pitch; they might introduce new colours to the orchestra; but they were hardly the means for a musical revolution (Griffiths 11). This is probably why music made with these instruments was so readily

accepted by the public, as witnessed by Termens reception. True experiments in music have always had to struggle for acceptance. According to Holmes, there was little that could be called avant-garde about the majority of works written for [these early electronic] instruments (Holmes 77).

The next step in the development of electronic music was taken with audio tools not intended for the creation of sound, but for the reproduction of sound. Between the wars, composers conducted experiments manipulating sounds on phonograph records, using variable-speed turntables, which could bring about limited but still striking transformations (Griffiths 11). In 1939 and again in 1942, for his two performance pieces

Imaginary Landscape no. 1 and Imaginary

Landscape no. 2,

John Cage used test records of pure frequency tones, which he then

played together on variable-speed turntables (Griffiths 11). However, the tape recorder was to have a far greater influence on the very nature and definition of music. It jump-started an obsessive quest for new and different music technology (Holmes 77).

Invented in 1935, and widely available by 1950, the tape recorder had transformed the practice of working with sounds in the studio, and the field of electronic music, virtually overnight (Griffiths 13). Some composers, such as Varse, continued to use orchestral instruments in conjunction with this new medium, however, most practitioners of tape music focused their efforts on this medium. Eschewing the sonic novelties of the theremin and ondes martenot, composers instead sought other sounds, other tonalities and worked directly with the raw materials of sound to find them (Holmes 77).

In 1948, Pierre Schaeffer, a sound technician working for Radio-diffusion-Tlvision Franaise,

began to produce on magnetic tape several short studies in what he called musique

concrte.

Schaeffer, like Cage, had originally been working with recorded discs. However, the

processes that they were both using were greatly simplified by switching over to this new medium: sounds could readily be isolated on a piece of magnetic tape; there was no need for the array of discs and turntables with which the first examples of laboriously composed (Griffiths 13).

musique concrte

had been

Williams Mix

(1952) was John Cages first composition using magnetic tape recordings as

source material, consisting of hundreds of taped sounds edited together using unusual splices to change the envelope of sounds (Holmes 115). Thirteen years after the American introduction of the theremin, Cage performed

Williams Mix

to a divided reception. In a recording of a

concert of this piece, one can hear the audiences jeers interspersed with its bravos ( OHM:

the

early gurus of electronic music, 1948-1980,

track

16).

Schaeffers

experiments, were studio experiments, based on sounds from a particular source, such as railway trains or the piano, and the recordings were transformed by his playing them at different speeds, forwards or in reverse, isolating fragments and superimposing one sound on another (Griffiths 12). Schaeffer too used unusual splices in order to, free his source material from native

associations (Griffiths 12). In the domain of tape recording, space and time became equivalent forces to be worked like any other material substances of music (Holmes 135).

Messiaen, Boulez, and Varse, among others all composed pieces in

musique concrte.

In

1953 Varse acquired a tape recorder and interpolated sections of sound on tape between the instrumental sections of

Dserts (Truax 233). When Dserts

was performed in Paris in late

1954, [t]he result was an outburst similar to that which, forty years earlier, had greeted

The 9

Rite of Spring

(Griffiths 13). For Varse, by placing electronic music within the context of

an orchestral composition, [he] had implied that the new medium was to be considered seriously as an extension of the old, not kept to the esoteric confines of concerts of noises (Griffiths 13). But in a testament to the rapidly changing ideas about the inclusion of technology in all aspects of life, only four years after the reception to

Dserts, Varses Pome lectroniqe played at

the pavilion for the Philips Radio Corporation at the 1958 Brussels Worlds Fair, to general public acceptance (Holmes 134). While initially causing outrage, according to Holmes, [t]he influence of

Williams Mix

and other works nonetheless began to broaden opinions about

what was or was not musical (Holmes 117).

One of the most important artists to use

musique concrte

was a man who

reprised

Schaeffers artist/engineer role. Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German who would travel to France to work in the studio with Schaeffer, where he believed that tape composition took him inside the molecular structure of sound (Holmes 135). Stockhausen used the technical instrumentation of editing techniques of electronic music to gain control over all of the constituent parts of musical sound, which appealed to his fascination with Schnbergs serialism (Holmes 136).

Stockhausen was to take the principles he learned about sound during his work with Schaeffer and leave

musique concrte

behind, focusing instead on creating brand new sounds. The

first use of purely electronically synthesized music, that is music without any orchestra accompaniment or acoustic sources, was produced by Stockhausen in the early 1950s at the studios of the North West German Radio in Cologne, where he later became director (Truax 232). NWGR founder Herbert Eimert and Stockhausen called their new medium, music generated exclusively by electronic means,

Elektronische Musik

(Griffiths 14). According to

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Griffiths, Eimert and Stockhausen sought to combine their emphasis on pure electronic music with a generalized version of Schnbergs serial method (Griffiths 14). However, [w]here Schoenberg had confined the technique to the domain of pitch, Eimert and Stockhausen sought to extend derail organization to every aspect of sound, encompassing duration, volume and timbre (Griffiths 14). The electronic medium proved uniquely suited to such an endeavour, since it allowed the composer to gauge quantities exactly, and construct sound from the basic atoms of pure frequencies obtained from oscillators (Griffiths 14).

Stockhausen took a number of oscillators and made them each produce a different sine wave, and, using Helmholtzs principles, he combined those sine waves into new timbres. Stockhausens

Studie I

(1953) was composed using sine waves, without overtones, through a process of

additive synthesis (Holmes 136), i.e. the combination of different pure sine waves.

Studie II

(1954) was also composed with pure sine waves, but those waves were passed through a reverberation unit and recorded, adding bands of distortion similar to white noise (Holmes 136). According to Truax, with such work the compositional problem is how to find a method of organizing timbre that is a structurally powerful as that of tonal harmony (Truax 234). Indeed, according to Griffiths, Stockhausens success was not complete, for the pieces proved that the mechanisms of synthesizing and perceiving timbre were still improperly understood (Griffiths 14). But the

Studien

at the very least demonstrated that the future of electronic music was to

lie more with the creation of the new than with the

musique concrte

technique of

readjusting the old (Griffiths 14). Clearly Stockhausen was influenced by Cages earlier experiments with sine tones on discs. However, while Cage wanted to admit all sounds and noise into music, Stockhausen sought to use electronic music to control the continuum between tone

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and noise (Holmes 137).

After these initial experiments with synthesized sound, Stockhausen returned first to acoustic composition, and then later back to tape, and then finally, he began to create music where he combined all three techniques. Also at this time, Stockhausen turned his attention to the spatial projection of electronic music, controlling amplitude and the placement of sounds through the use of loudspeakers, in the concert hall (Holmes 137). During the performance of

Gesang der

Jnglinge (1955-6) five loudspeakers were placed so that they surrounded the audience. The
listener was in the eye of the sonic storm, with music emanating from every side, moving clockwise and counterclockwise , moving and not moving in space (Holmes 140).

Gesang der

Jnglinge

remains the most abundantly successful composition of its kind (Griffiths 37).

Stockhausen uses, according to Griffiths, the electronic medium to consider music as process rather than form, and so to create, in many cases, works in perpetual evolution (Griffiths 27). Electronic means make it possible to generate sounds of long duration and, more importantly, gradual change, so that an electronic work, whether for tape of live resources, can mirror in its progress the techniques of timbre composition and transformation used in its creation (Griffiths 27).

Life with Electronic Music While in the time since Stockhausen and Cage first performed their sonic experiments there has been an absolute explosion of music made by electronic means, for this study it remains important to address the socio-cultural effects from the introduction of electronic music. For the musician, the electronic medium had taken composition into the realm of the unlimited with infinite choices in respect to possible sounds. This medium offered forms of control of sound design, which

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previously had not existed, as well as control over the organizational structure and the communicational environment (Truax 244). According to Truax, this then changed the communicational system of composer, performer, instruments builder, and audience (Truax 231). The former structures between these groups became more fluid as composers performed their own works, performers built their own instruments and listeners became composers. Stockhausen built his own instruments from oscillators, as did Robert Moog approximately a decade later. And because of people such as Cage and Stockhausen, who were willing to take chances, musicians that followed them might then realise the opportunity either to follow in their footsteps, or create sonic experiments using other means. That is what Cage and Stockhausen both took from Schnberg the notion to experiment with music. If anything justifies the technological embrace on society, it is these creative uses of the new resources, the ones that fulfill the basic definition of what a human tool should be an extension, not a replacement or surrogate (Truax 243).

Communication technologies, such as electronic music, have the power to change the way we think about things, the way we perceive the world in short, our patterns of communication (Truax 218). Traditional uses of technology influence common perceptions, standards, and expectations, and alternatives to convention throw such norms into perspective (Truax 218). The alternative, in this case electronic music, presents new ways for listeners to interact with sonic art. Early electronic music requires one to engage in a different type of listening, these experiments cannot be understand on the basis of melody and harmony aloneinstead, they require greater sensitivity to sound quality and spatial, textural relationships (Truax 234). And while this medium may not have been readily accepted by the general public, but it heralded a new age in culture. Electronic music has now permeated our listening experience. The dichotomy of noise vs.

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music has been reconciled in the listeners mind. Possibilities suggested through the use of a machine become incorporated into human awareness (Truax 224).

Conclusion Though the outrageous instruments are often what stand out when looking at the history of early electronic music, it remains that it was the spirit of experimentation that played the starring role. Composers and musicians explored new technologies, sometimes pushing music to the absolute limits of conventional taste, and creating music for instruments that they often did not understand, that in fact barely worked; listeners, who were often brave in welcoming new sounds into the realm of music; science, whose discoveries aided the physical reorganization of music; technology, which was changing as rapidly as inventors could file their patents; and again composers, for subverting technology for something other than its intended use. It all happened together, and one part could not have transpired without the other. Mental change affected physical change and the changing physical world influenced mental expression.

The listener is obliged to suspend expectations and to follow, in every moment, the path unfolded by the music. And though there may be no room for the listeners unconscious prediction, electronic music can still hold powerful surprises. It is true that the medium makes it only too easy to indulge in trick effects: bizarre juxtapositions of unrelated ideas, sudden shifts from the familiar to the unfamiliar, gradual disruptions of everyday sounds. Yet these devices can also, in the hands of a sensitive musician, give rise to that wonder which is not an insignificant part of our experience of electronic music. The wonder of new discovery, of having ones preconceptions overturned, is part of the excitement of the art.

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