Author: Elliott Schwartz

Publisher: Greenwood

Published: 1975

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13:

This book introduces the reader to both the historical aspects and the important aesthetic considerations of electronic music and relates electronic developments to the general condition of all twentieth-century music. Using a minimum of technical jargon, the author helps the reader to understand the electronic music scene and even to experiment with electronic composition. The book begins by asking the reader to consider electronic music as a giant performing instrument that has opened up new musical possibilities in the twentieth century just as the piano did in the nineteenth. The author also reminds us that, through classical recordings, Muzak, and pop groups, the use of electronic technique to manipulate sound has become much more closely related to our common musical experience than most of us realize. Against this background, the author describes some of the important musical developments that led to composers' interest in electronics, traces the history of electronic instrumentation itself, and provides a basic introduction to the workings of the classic tape studio, the RCA synthesizer, and computer-generated sound. In a section devoted to the present and future effects of the electronic revolution on our musical habits, the author discusses such topics as the nature of performance, jazz, rock, pop and serious music, and the teaching of music. A separate section of the book contains twenty-three essays on electronic music by composers Lukas Foss, Otto Luening, Pauline Oliveros, Charles Wuorinen, and others. The final section provides suggestions for amateur composers of electonic music, covering methods of tape composition with recorders, editing, and possibilites for electronic modifications in "live" performance or improvisation.