Gayle Young. The Sackbut Blues: Hugh Le Caine, Pioneer in Electronic Music. Ottawa: National Museum of Science and Technology, 1989. xiv, 274 pp. ISBN 0-660- 12006-2

Abstract

GAYLE YOUNG. The Sackbut Blues: Hugh Le Caine. Pioneer in Electronic Music. Ottawa: National Museum of Science and Technology, 1989. xiv. 274 pp. ISBN 0-66012006-2 Canada has a history of original creative thinkers, and Hugh Le Caine (1914-1977) must be one of tne most remarkable among them. LeCaine was both an experimenter and an inventor. In 1920's, he experimented with aspects of sound recording and processing: John Cage did much same things in late 1940's and early 1950's and almost immediately became a celebrity. In 1940's. Le Caine designed and built a musical (described in The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments as the earliest instrument that resembles a synthesizer [Davies 1984: 680], whose power and flexibility of control still has not been surpassed by modern digital instruments: Robert Moog built a similar instrument twenty years later and gained no small reputation thereby. While still a child. Le Caine built such futuristic, if rather impractical, devices as an electronic ukulele, a paper-roll-driven autoharp, and a guitar with foot pedals for tuning like those of a harp. He experimented with processing sounds by means of microphones and speakers and by means of modified playback of homemade phonograph recordings. His absolute pitch, remarkable musical memory, and formal and autodidactic study of musical instruments made him particularly suited to musical instrument invention. After first synthesizer, he went on to create first polyphonic synthesizer, an audio playback device that allowed for highly controlled mixing and editing, and ingenious controllers to allow composers to interact with synthesizers and tape recorders. Given his unusual accomplishments, perhaps most remarkable aspect of man was his shyness. Although he was composer of first (and for many years, most famous) tape composition produced in Canada and for more than a decade Canadian composer of electroacoustic music best represented on disc, he never considered himself a real composer. He maintained he was only trying out his instruments in see them from composer's point of view. He tried in various ways to draw attention of composers to what his instruments had to offer, but attempts were so humble that few composers or performers came to know of Le Caine's accomplishments during his lifetime. There were illustrious moments, of course. Arnold Walter seized upon Le Caine's work and, in cooperation with National Research Council (Le Caine's lifelong employer), set up University of Toronto Electronic Music Studios (UTEMS). In 1959, this was but second electronic music studio in North America (the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center having been established preceding year) and for next ten years one of of world's most important centres for art. Le Caine filled UTEMS with his marvellous devices and, a few years later, did same for Istvan Anhalt's facility at McGill University. He also placed equipment in studios of Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Queen's University (Le Caine's alma mater, where School of Music building was named, in part, in his honour in 1974). Le Caine published much of his work in technical journals and occasionally in musical ones, but world was not quite ready at that time to make much use of such information. Moreover, since Le Caine worked for Canadian National Research Council, marketing of his inventions was subject to certain restrictions. Perhaps more importantly, even where commercial production of Le Caine's devices seemed to be on horizon, his modesty and perfectionism made him reluctant to agree that a project was finally ready for manufacture. Robert Moog's name became synonymous with musical synthesizers for more than a decade not because he made a better but because he managed actually to market one (something perhaps easier to accomplish in United States). …