Introduction

Looking back from our beginning of XXI century, it can be strange to see that only a century ago the art of music was so vastly different from what we have today. There were no innumerable musical genres and sub-genres; what we call classical music was the synonym for music − at least for that more artistic part of it.

It was somewhere on the brinks of XX century when this great tradition started showing its age. Suddenly, composers didn't anymore strictly follow its aesthetics and formal foundations; instead, they were in the search for something new. Though classical music was still live and well, the modern part of it practically broke free from the rest and started living a separate life, today usually called modernism. Composers such as Stravinsky and Berg made music which was still unmistakably classical, but lacked certain features that classical music always had while introducing previously unheard of ones. There was a turmoil in academic musical circles; some musicians and audiences embraced the changes, while others were disgusted.

“No, it is not!” exclaimed composer Camille Saint Saens when, on the premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, he was told that the instrument which was heard on the very beginning of the work was a bassoon. He promptly walked out of the hall, murmuring something about the abuse of the instrument.

As this was not enough, big seizmic shifts started happening outside of classical musical world too. Jazz music appeared and quickly gained wide popularity. Soon jazz will influence classical music, as well as give birth to other more populist musical directions. It was the beginning of the pop-dominated musical era.

Then there were movies. What is to become the most innovative happening of the XX century art, movies, also had its sumptuous counter-part in music written for movies. This music was the most direct child of classical traditions inside the modern musical sphere. With movie music, people could for the first time listen to something that is artistic on the same way classical music was, but was not anymore classical music. It was a big shift.

But this book will deal with none of the music mentioned until now. This book deals with what proved to be the biggest change that happened in this period of turmoils in musical art. Namely, the electronic music - the music made possible by technology for recording, reproducing, processing and synthesizing sound.

This technology was not only the most spectacular change that XX century brought to music; it was also a very rare occurrence on an universal level. It was an occurrence of something ancient being reborn. For centuries and millenniums, we thought of music as being singed or played on traditional instruments, with which we became familiar and intimate with; and now, electronic technology seems to dwarf them and send them to museums.

Understandably, this caused some upset. A true taboo soon surrounded experiments with electronic instruments, and at that not a thin one at all. This was especially true for established musical circles, starting with traditional classical music, which have chosen to remain mostly silent on these activities.

But still, it was there where electronic music first appeared and started growing. On the beginning of XX century, musicians from musical conservatories were interested in the first electronic devices, theorized about electronic music and tried to make first electronic pieces. With time academic electronic music acquired a name “electro-acoustic” music, or the most general term “art electronic music”.

Wikipedia:

Electronic art music refers to those forms of electronic music that fall within the general category of art music. The term encompasses a range of experimental music forms, both historical and contemporary, created by means of electronic instruments and differentiated from electronic forms of popular music, such as electronic rock, techno-pop, electronica or electronic dance music. Due to its experimental and eclectic nature, electronic art music has remained relatively obscure and out of the awareness of the general public, receiving little financial support from sales of its creations. The development of electronic art music has mostly been supported by, and occurred within, academic institutions. It has also been assisted by participation of corporate sponsors through their contributions of experimental equipment as part of their commercial development process. Although electronic art music has not penetrated the popular music marketplace directly, it has influenced the course of popular music, from the early days of electronic rock, space rock, and progressive rock, through the later developments of electronica, electronic dance music, ambient music, space music, and cinema soundtracks.

In this book we will refer to this music field as “academic electronic music” rather then “art electronic music”. If this sounds as somewhat of a deprecation towards academic electronic music, it is. Simply, this music, although outlandish, tended to sound boring. From the first experiments in electronic music onward, academic electronic music acquired a reputation of a grotesque and vain concept, and it will retain it throughout XX century.

Partially, this was so due to limitations of the first electronic instruments. The most known of these early e-instruments is legendary Theremin; it is named after the Westernized name of its Russian inventor, Léon Theremin, who patented the device in 1928. Theremin is controlled without physical contact by the performer, and is so notoriously difficult to control that it is today more known as a show instrument than something that a musician would actually use to make music.

But electronic instruments were to experience a fast evolution. During 1970s first generation of true synthesizers was born. These instruments were able to produce lush sounds never heard before, accompanied with rich sound effects. As a consequence, electronic music started to sound more like true music. Musicians of the time, who were mostly into various rock, jazz, movie and pop music forms, started using them. Synthesizers infiltrated all of these music fields, contributing to theirs sound more or less.

But what was especially important, is that for the first time a special field of synthesized music was created, outside of academia. It is in this period that people started speaking of “synthesizer music” and becoming aware of modernist musical revolution that was around for some time in academic environment. A peculiar brand of music writers appeared, who contributed to arguably the most enthusiastic period of electronic music to nowadays – Jean Michel Jarre, Vangelis and Mike Oldfield are some of the most legendary electronic or partially electronic composers.

Taken that world was at the tame taken by storm by Beatles, Rolling Stones and rock craze, the success of these outlandish purely instrumental electronic recordings was stupendous. Although the composers themselves were chiefly out of the limelight, the music could be heard almost everywhere. It was especially made famous by regular broadcasts on the then-iconic radio Luxembourg. Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells theme was even number one on the U.K. charts for several months, and Jean Michel Jarre's Oxygene 4 was number two. It was looking as the beggining of something big.

Suffices to say, it wasn't recieved kindly by everyone. Awful reputation that electronic music gained from the times when the first academic electronic experimentators were laughed at was not easily washed away. The first popular electronic pieces were, despite theirs success, similarly called just rubbish by many. And even today, after 60+ years of theoretical, practical and commercial break-troughs, electronic music scene is essentially not established. E-musicians are still a bit of outcasts. As I write this, in 2016, many people, even in youngest generations, don’t see electronic music as art with ‘soul’. ‘Soul’ is reserved for traditional acoustic music. The fact that these days we are all daily exposed to electronic music, youth almost exclusively listening to it, is adding a grotesque twist to this picture.

The result is widespread ignorance of achievements in the field of electronic music. From neutral-sounding definitions of electronic musical forms in official musical literature, one can not work out how defacto illegal electronic music is on all levels of musical state. This could be better felt from the treatment of electronic music in current medias: it is exposed to a degree, some of it even much exposed (mostly various dance forms) but, seemingly contrary to logic, it is the most revolutionary and popular electronic music that tends to be the most obscured.

However, this obscuration of e-music is not the result of some contrivance on the side of medias. It is a fair reflection of the actual distance between the wide audiences and electronic music. Wide circles of people don’t have quite formed ideas about what electronic music actually is. In theirs eyes, term electronic music is mostly connected with dance music or some utilitarian forms – “ambient music” (or “soundtracks for living”) say, or music for video games. But the stand-alone art of electronic music, as a part of a bigger world of multimedia electronic art, is unknown to most people and they are still discovering it as a novelty.

Even the very term of “electronic music” is problematic. Even lovers of e-music are not certain what is meant by it. Is any music played on a synthesizer electronic? Synthesizers are used in practically all musical directions. Which attributes then make “real” electronic music? Can it be said, that electronic music is that music which would lose on its essence if played with anything else but electronic instruments? Then again, Jean Michel Jarre, one of the most uncanny experimentators in electronic music to nowadays, once said:

“It’s not music that is electronic, but instruments”.

And still the term is in use for almost a century, and refers to a sort of music made and, sometimes, inspired by electronic instruments.

When instruments themselves are concerned, three machines will be most remembered from the 1970s period: the Moog synthesizer, used by Wendy Carlos, Jean Michel Jarre and others, then the dutch organ Eminent, again extensively used by Jean Michel Jarre, and the Yamaha line peeking with model CS80 on which Vangelis based many of his orchestrations (Beaubourg, China and many others).

Digital synthesizers and, especially, computers are the generation of synthesizers to follow the most romantic electronics of 1970s. It is still actual. Digital technology for programing sound brought theoretically unlimited possibilities of sound-definition. So-called sampling techniques, techniques of digital recording and manipulating the sounds of environment -- including those produced by playing acoustic musical instruments -- were introduced. Some of these instruments included a detailed music-programing language and brought to the full light the controversy between programming music and live playing. It was now more apparent than ever that an electronic musician is also a technician or even a scientist – likewise a classical musician had to be a craftsman in some other sense. People who produced music on these machines were also usually computer programmers and/or hardware engineers on some level.

Despite all the gadgetry produced in this period, the archetypal 'instruments' of the generation are programmable home computers that could also play – such as unforgetable Commodore computers C64, with its programmable analogue 3-channel SID chip, and Amiga with its four digital sound channels (1990s techno star Moby first became known as a maker of these so-called musical 'modules' for Amiga). They pioneered a home computer music culture that was tightly connected with professional electronica of 1970s and 1980s.

And that's where we are now.