It is in this period that the first “classics” of the genre are composed. Most of them are for tape alone, reflecting the available technology, but this would quickly change.
Throughout the 1950s, following the birth — or discovery, as Pierre Schaeffer would always refer to it — of musique concrète and the official founding in 1952 of electronic music in Germany, studios are opened up around the world. An important number of composers (of instrumental music) would try their hands in the electronic music or musique concrète studios, with varying success.
In Canada the first electronic music studio at the University of Toronto is opened in 1958–59. Soon after, several other studios were opened across Canada: McGill University, Montréal (1964); University of British Columbia (Vancouver, 1965); the first francophone studio at Université Laval (Québec City, 1969), and closing off the decade, Concordia University (Montréal, 1970).
In contrast to Europe, where studios were usually associated with radio stations, Canadian electroacoustics evolved in the universities (McGill, Concordia, Université Laval, Université de Montréal, etc.) right through to the 1980s. In Canada, there has never been an electroacoustic or electronic music studio associated directly with a radio station. There is, however, a rumour that such a studio did at one time exist at Radio-Canada, the French section of the Canadian Broadcasting Centre (CBC) Head Office in Montréal, thanks to the efforts of Pierre Mercure. Regardless of the veracity of this rumour, there was in fact one person who used the CBC Toronto studios to their full advantage, even though they were never intended to be used for electroacoustics. From 1967–1979, pianist Glenn Gould, through his radio documentaries, proposed particular forms and a mode of listening and perception, as Pierre Schaeffer had done through musique concrète. Unfortunately, despite a few noteworthy exceptions, the example he set would have few followers.
INTRODUCTION 
