Chapter 3 - New sounds and new instruments: Electronic music up until 1948

Summary

Having considered the general history of recording, we'll now examine the development of electronic music more intensively up until just before the middle of the twentieth century. Selecting dividing points in historical surveys always involves a degree of arbitrariness, but for our purposes, 1948 provides a useful line, corresponding as it does not only with Schaeffer's first musique concrète studies, but also to signs of the forthcoming post-war economic boom, following a wartime technology push in such areas as communications and computing. The year 1947 had seen the beginning of practical transistor technology, and the first commercial magnetic tape recorders in the US appeared after Bing Crosby's broadcast from tape in November 1947.

In looking at this early period, we'll explore the creation of new instruments and new sounds through nascent electrical technology, jumping around slightly in history to explore different ideas and lines of development. Artistic and commercial measures of success will at times work together and at other times be in conflict. The history of electronic instrument development is an extremely diverse one, presenting many different interfaces: For our purposes, we can consider the interface to be the mechanism(s) via which a performer controls an instrument. We might make a useful distinction between those instruments that make use of, mimic or augment traditional instrumental interfaces (most notably, but not exclusively, the keyboard) and those which explore entirely new ones. The latter category includes some exotic developments indeed and there has been an ongoing debate about questions of accessibility, virtuosity, and expressivity with new interfaces for musical performance. Traditional interfaces (at least potentially) allow for performers to take advantage of existing skills, but at the same time may limit the potential of an instrument by constricting the range of control and expressivity.