Electronic and Computer Music (review)

Abstract

Electronic and Computer Music. By Peter Manning. Revised and expanded ed. York: Oxford University Press, 2004. [x, 474 p. ISBN 0-19-517085-7. $35.00.] Bibliography, illustrations, discography, index, photos. No other genre of music has experienced such expansion, in terms of both mechanics and craft, as electroacoustic music has in its approximately 100 year history, a history as much about developing technology as it is about music itself. As director of electroacoustic music studio at University of Durham, Peter Manning has background and experience that enables him to provide a thoughtful and thorough account of electroacoustic music, an umbrella term he uses to describe electronic and computer music because it does not attempt to partition medium in terms of techniques by which sound material is generated, processed, and organized. Instead, it focuses attention on very special nature of acoustic results, taking account of fact that these will always be reproduced via loudspeakers or headphones (p. 403). intent of Electronic and Computer Music is not only to provide a chronology of genre, but also to impart technical foundations that magnify of each development in its history; a particularly important aspect, considering nearly one half of this revised and expanded book is new material dedicated to digital audio and its related elements. Admittedly, book does become heavily laden with technical jargon at times for casual reader, but it is clearly necessary in order to fully appreciate innovations that contributed to evolution of modern music synthesis and digital audio techniques. book is divided into eight sections: (1) Developments from 1945-1960; (2) New Horizons in Electronic Design; (3) The Electronic Repertory from 1960; (4) The Revolution to 1980; (5) Digital Audio; (6) MIDI; (7) Desktop Synthesis and Signal Processing, and (8) The Expanding Perspective. Manning precedes first chapter with background information on activities and developments from turn of century to 1945, describing some initial attempts at electronic sound generation, including such exotica as Dynamophone (measuring in at 60 feet and 200 tons) and Givelet (a precursor to Hammond Organ), as well as more familiar and established ondes martenot and theremin. He also explores influence of Italian Futurist movement in poetry on evolving compositional techniques during first decade of twentieth century, an influence that bolstered an assertive call for incorporation of new instruments, larger tonal palettes, and liberal extension of compositional strategies as a whole. This highly experimental period also marked emergence of optical and magnetic recording, as well as introduction of commercial 78 rpm records. French and German musical aesthetics have had a long history of fundamental differences with regard to their respective tenets. With musique concrete of Pierre Schaeffer's Radiodiffusion Television Francaise in Paris, and elektronische Musik of Werner Meyer-Eppler's Norwestdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne, quarrels and disputes were a regular course of action for these two major forces in electronic music. differences were, however, kept at a professional level, as Manning explains it: Intense disagreements developed between studios and these were aired in public on a number of occasions, notably at summer European festivals of contemporary music that were then approaching their zenith in terms of their international significance (p. 19). He clarifies that the reasons for this overt hostility were not merely a matter of patriotism, although understandably this factor played a part. They lay more fundamentally in marked differences of outlook as regards acceptable practices of electronic composition (pp. 19-20). section 2 concentrates on these two camps, as well as Milan school, founded in 1955 by Luciano Berio and Bruno Maderna, and developments in America, represented in work of Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, John Cage, and others, along with Milton Babbitt and seminal developments he made with punched tape control system of RCA synthesizer at Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. …