Electronic and Computer Music (review)

Reviewed by: Electronic and Computer Music Robert D. Terrio Electronic and Computer Music. By Peter Manning . Revised and expanded ed.New 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 the developing technology as it is about the music itself. As director of the electroacoustic music studio at the University of Durham, Peter Manning has the 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 the medium in terms of the techniques by which sound material is generated, processed, and organized. Instead, it focuses attention on the very special nature of the acoustic results, taking account of the fact that these will always be reproduced via loudspeakers or headphones" (p. 403). The intent of Electronic and Computer Musicis not only to provide a chronology of the genre, but also to impart technical foundations that magnify the significance 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, the book does become heavily laden with technical jargon at times for the casual reader, [End Page 746]but it is clearly necessary in order to fully appreciate the innovations that contributed to the evolution of modern music synthesis and digital audio techniques. The 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 Digital Revolution to 1980;" (5) "Digital Audio;" (6) "MIDI;" (7) "Desktop Synthesis and Signal Processing," and (8) "The Expanding Perspective." Manning precedes the first chapter with background information on activities and developments from the turn of the century to 1945, describing some initial attempts at electronic sound generation, including such exotica as the Dynamophone (measuring in at 60 feet and 200 tons) and the Givelet (a precursor to the Hammond Organ), as well as the more familiar and established ondes martenot and theremin. He also explores the influence of the Italian Futurist movement in poetry on evolving compositional techniques during the first decade of the twentieth century, an influence that bolstered an assertive call for incorporation of new instruments, larger tonal palettes, and the liberal extension of compositional strategies as a whole. This highly experimental period also marked the emergence of optical and magnetic recording, as well as the 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 the musique concrète of Pierre Schaeffer's Radiodiffusion Télévision Française in Paris, and the 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. The differences were, however, kept at a professional level, as Manning explains it: "Intense disagreements developed between the studios and these were aired in public on a number of occasions, notably at the 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 the Milan school, founded in 1955 by Luciano Berio and Bruno Maderna, and developments in America, represented in the work of Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, John Cage, and others, along with Milton Babbitt and the seminal developments he made with the punched tape control system of the RCA synthesizer at Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. In "New Horizons in Electronic Design," Manning describes possibly the single most influential...