Learning the Studio: Sketches for Mid-Century Electronic Music

Abstract

Electronic music is a hugely impactful development that altered the entire course of twentieth century music, though it often seems a bit hard to access analytically. This article uses sketches to open a window onto the ways that composers adapted to the exciting but unfamiliar realm of electronic music. In the postwar era, European avant-garde composers such as Berio, Boulez, Kagel, Koenig, Ligeti, Pousseur, and Stockhausen, who had access to institutional studios, expanded their musical thinking in dialogue with electronic music technologies and discourses. Initially, composers made translations to and from acoustic music, but quickly learned to create musical ideas in cooperation with technicians and studio machinery. Composers also took on new scientific insights as they learned how to use electronic studio machines for making effective musical sound. In this way, the studio’s technological affordances and constraints, as well as its collaborative working culture, had major impacts on the progression of both electronic and acoustic music.