THE CONCORDIA COLLECTION WITHIN ELECTROACOUSTIC HISTORY

1958
Belgium
At the Brussels Expo, Varèse’s Poème Électroniqueem> is spatialized in the Phillips Pavilion, designed by Le Corbusier.

Spatialized Diffusion (Spatialization)
In the first issue of the journal L’Espace du son, Annette Vande Gorne calls attention to the fact that “the notion of the acoustic image appears with sterephonic recording.” In fact, space — “which is not the (real or logical) milieu in which things appear, but rather the means by which the position of something becomes possible” [translation] (Merleau-Ponty 1945) — as a musical component was explored in the 1950s by composers Pierrre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry and Edgar Varèse. Other composers, such as Stockhausen, Xenakis, Penderecki, etc., would also explore the potential of space with works composed for orchestra.

In electroacoustic composition, space is a compositional dimension of its own. As it proposes auditory images that Francis Dhomont suggests are “never entirely real, or, if you prefer, realistic,” and considering that the experience of such images may be considered to have a parallel in synthesthetic perception, the use of space as a compositional parameter has become increasingly important over time. This has ultimately led to the definition of a particular æsthetic attitude specific to acousmatic music, whereby sounds are “projected” (similar to cinema) in space via a “loudspeaker orchestra”. Spatialized diffusion, or spatialization, either using this approach or a number of loudspeakers equivalent to the number of channels for which the work is composed, is a fundamental constituent of the presentation of electroacoustic works in concert and its practice has become a convention. These days, it is in fact rare that works are played over only two channels, in stereo.

1957
USA
At the Bell Telephone Laboratories (AT&T), Max Mathews does research in computer-generated synthetic sounds.

1958
Stereophonic recording and its corollary, the two-channel tape recorder, appears on the mass market.

USA
Birth of the “San Francisco school” with Morton Subotnick.

France
The Groupe de musique concrète becomes the Groupe de recherches musicales (GRM).

Belgium
At the Brussels Expo, Varèse’s Poème Électronique is spatialized in the Phillips Pavilion, designed by Le Corbusier.

1959
USA
RCA Synthesizer (Columbia-Princeton).

France
Iannis Xenakis creates stochastic music: sounds and musical form are calculated entirely by a computer.

1960
Creation of the first sequencer as part of the research on synthesizers.

István Anhalt - Electronic Composition No. 3 “Birds & Bells“ (00:10:17)

1960-62
Germany
Herbert Eimert’s research into vocal synthesis result in his composition Epitaph Für Aikichi Kuboyama.

1962
USA
Compositions are created on 4-track tape recorders by Milton Babbitt, Ilhan Mimaroglu, etc.

A. Koenig - Terminus (00:14:38)

1962-64
USA
Milton Babbitt composes Philomel for an ensemble of synthesizers (RCA).

1963
Holland
Appearance of the audio cassette and the mini-cassette. At first, several rival companies attempt to impose different protocols (notably RCA-Victor), but in the end the protocol developed by Philips would become the norm, saturating the market in the 1980s. Around 2001 the decline of this audio storage format would be more or less complete.

France
First collective concert of the GRM.

1964
First generation of commercial synthesizers — the Moog Synthesizer — and the start of a general trend to reduce the size of such instruments.

Computer music programmes are slowly becoming available, but are by no means commonplace.

1965
USA
The synthesizer, now gaining in popularity, is starting to be used in concert situations, live performances and as an instrument as such.

Germany
One of the most important explorations of live transformation of sound — in terms of impact — is Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Mikrophonie (1964–65).

Alcides Lanza - Exercise I (00:08:41)

1966
Italy / USA
The first groups performing “live electronics” begin to appear.

France
Pierre Schaeffer publishes his classic treatise Le Traité des objets musicaux. This would be followed by a series of instructional discs, Le Solfège des objets sonores, which he created in collaboration with François-Bernard Mâche and Beatriz Feyrrera.

1967
Commercialization of the analogue cassette.

France
Pierre Henry composes one of the first works in which electroacoustic music is combined with pop music in Messe pour le temps présent. Because of this work, Henry would later be nicknamed the “grandfather of techno”, a title he adamantly declines to accept.

François Bayle’s Espaces inhabitables is the first work to use recordings of outdoor sounds.

USA
Morton Subotnick’s Silver Apples of the Moon is the first piece commissioned by an organization with no affiliation to a concert or performance.

Jozef Malovec - Orthogenesis (00:08:31)