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End of the 19th century
- The first electronic musical devices were developed at the end of the 19th century. During the 1920s and 1930s, some electronic instruments were introduced and the first compositions featuring them were written.
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Music produced solely from electronic generators was first produced in Germany in 1953 by Karlheinz Stockhausen. Electronic music was also created in Japan and the United States beginning in the 1950s and Algorithmic composition with computers was first demonstrated in the same decade.
Jul 25, 2022 · Although some claim that the first electrical music instrument, Golden Dionysus, was possibly developed in 1748, marking the birth of electronic music, the genre more probably originated, in the broader sense, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
- Overview
- Beginnings
- Impact of technological developments
electronic music, any music involving electronic processing, such as recording and editing on tape, and whose reproduction involves the use of loudspeakers.
Although any music produced or modified by electrical, electromechanical, or electronic means can be called electronic music, it is more precise to say that for a piece of music to be electronic, its composer must anticipate the electronic processing subsequently applied to his or her musical concept, so that the final product reflects in some way the composer’s interaction with the medium. This is no different from saying that a composer should have in mind an orchestra when composing a symphony and a piano when composing a piano sonata. A conventional piece of popular music does not become electronic music by being played on an electronically amplified guitar, nor does a Bach fugue become electronic music if played on an electronic organ instead of a pipe organ. Some experimental compositions, often containing chance elements and perhaps of indeterminate scoring, permit but do not necessarily demand electronic realization, but this is a specialized situation.
Electronic music is produced from a wide variety of sound resources—from sounds picked up by microphones to those produced by electronic oscillators (generating basic acoustical waveforms such as sine waves, square waves, and sawtooth waves), complex computer installations, and microprocessors—that are recorded on tape and then edited into a permanent form. Generally, except for one type of performed music that has come to be called “live electronic music” (see below), electronic music is played back through loudspeakers either alone or in combination with ordinary musical instruments.
This article covers both early experimentation with electronic sound-producing devices and composers’ subsequent exploitation of electronic equipment as a technique of composition. Throughout the discussion it should be clear that electronic music is not a style but rather a technique yielding diverse results in the hands of different composers.
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During the 19th century, attempts were made to produce and record sounds mechanically or electromechanically. For example, the German scientist Hermann von Helmholtz traced waveforms of regular sounds to check results of his acoustical researches. An important event was the invention of the phonograph by Thomas Edison and Emile Berliner, independently, in the 1870s and 1880s. This invention not only marked the beginning of the recording industry but also showed that all the acoustical content of musical sounds could be captured (in principle, if not in actuality at that time) and be faithfully retained for future use.
The first major effort to generate musical sounds electrically was carried out over many years by an American, Thaddeus Cahill, who built a formidable assembly of rotary generators and telephone receivers to convert electrical signals into sound. Cahill called his remarkable invention the telharmonium, which he started to build about 1895 and continued to improve for years thereafter. The instrument failed because it was complex, impractical, and could not produce sounds of any magnitude since amplifiers and loudspeakers had not yet been invented. Nevertheless, Cahill’s concepts were basically sound. He was a visionary who lived ahead of his time, and his instrument was the ancestor of present-day electronic music synthesizers.
Between World War I and World War II, developments occurred that led more directly to modern electronic music, although most of them were technically, rather than musically, important. First was the development of audio-frequency technology. By the early 1920s basic circuits for sine-, square-, and sawtooth-wave generators had been invented, as had amplifiers, filter circuits, and, most importantly, loudspeakers. (Sine waves are signals consisting of “pure tones”—i.e., without overtones; sawtooth waves comprise fundamental tones and all related overtones; square waves consist only of the odd-numbered partials, or component tones, of the natural harmonic series.) Also, mechanical acoustical recording was replaced by electrical recording in the late 1920s.
Second was the development of electromechanical and electronic musical instruments designed to replace existing musical instruments—specifically, the invention of electronic organs. This was a remarkable achievement and one that absorbed the attention of many ingenious inventors and circuit designers. It should be stressed, however, that it was the objective of these organ builders to simulate and replace pipe organs and harmoniums, not to provide novel instruments that would stimulate the imaginations of avant-garde composers.
Most electromechanical and electronic organs employ subtractive synthesis, as do pipe organs. Signals rich in harmonic partials (such as sawtooth waves) are selected by the performer at the keyboard and combined and shaped acoustically by filter circuits that simulate the formant, or resonant-frequency, spectra—i.e., the acoustical components—of conventional organ stops. The formant depends on the filter circuit and does not relate to the frequency of a tone being produced. A low tone shaped by a given formant (a given stop) is normally rich in harmonics, while a high tone normally is poor in them. Psychologically, one expects this from all musical instruments, not only organs but also orchestral instruments.
Some electronic organs operate on the opposing principle of additive synthesis, whereby individually generated sine waves are added together in varying proportions to yield a complex waveform. The most successful of these is the Hammond organ, patented by Laurens Hammond in 1934. The Hammond organ has odd qualities because the richness of its harmonic content does not diminish as the player goes up the keyboard. The German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen (in Momente, 1961–62), the Norwegian composer Arne Nordheim (in Colorazione, 1968), and a few others have scored specifically for this instrument.
Third was the development of novel electronic musical instruments designed to supply timbres not provided by ordinary musical instruments. During the 1920s there was a burst of interest in building an extraordinary variety of such instruments, ranging from practical to absurd. The most successful of these were relatively few in number, were monophonic (i.e., could play only one melodic line at a time), and survive chiefly because some important music has been scored for them. These are the theremin, invented in 1920 by a Russian scientist, Leon Theremin; the Ondes martenot, first built in 1928 by a French musician and scientist, Maurice Martenot; and the trautonium, designed by a German, Friedrich Trautwein, in 1930.
The theremin is a beat-frequency audio oscillator (sine-wave generator) that has two condensers placed not inside the circuit chassis but, rather, outside, as antennas. Because these antennas respond to the presence of nearby objects, the pitch and amplitude of the output signal of the theremin can be controlled by the manner in which a performer moves his hands in its vicinity. A skilled performer can produce all sorts of effects, including scales, glissandi, and flutters. A number of compositions have been written for this instrument since the 1920s.
Mar 11, 2022 · Where do you begin a history of electronic music and the synthesizer? The popular and somewhat easy view is that the two are entwined, that electronic music started with the invention of the synthesiser and its use in the 60s and 70s. But actually the synthetic manipulation of sound, and the machines that did it can be traced back further.
Mar 5, 2024 · Among the earliest of these was the theremin, invented by Leon Theremin in 1919. The theremin was an early electronic instrument that produced sounds by detecting the position of the player’s hands around an antenna, allowing for the creation of otherworldly and ethereal sounds.
Mar 7, 2024 · Electronic music as we know it today can trace its roots back to the early 20th century, when inventors and musicians first began experimenting with electronic instruments. Some of the earliest examples of electronic music were created using devices such as the Theremin, which was invented in 1919 by Russian inventor Leon Theremin.
In 1972 Kahehashi founded Roland Corporation launching instruments such as the first microprocessor driven programmable drum machine CR-78 and the TR-808 which became a foundation for house and...
